


When a Heart Knows Fear

by smithsonianstucky (thelarenttrap)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Background Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Everyone Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, READ AUTHORS NOTE FOR TRIGGER WARNING, Steve has too many responsibilities, Team as Family, but don't worry archive warnings still don't apply, mentions of torture, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:14:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 62,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelarenttrap/pseuds/smithsonianstucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The events in D.C. and the collapse of SHIELD feel almost like a distant memory, an unmentionable weakness in the world's defense, and the Winter Soldier has yet to be found. In Sokovia another disaster has occurred and finally a lead springs to the surface: one line of data entry that mentions a man with a metal prosthetic. </p><p>For years, Steve's focus has solely been about finding Bucky. What he hasn't thought about is every obstacle that comes with Bucky's return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shuffle Me a Ninth Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a million to Kirstin for being my beta, she helped a ton as I don't know if I would have been confident enough to post this without someone having looked at it first. This is my first chaptered Stucky fic, so I guess bear with me. 
> 
> Work title from "Cecilia and the Satellite" by Andrew McMahon, chapter title from "Hopeless Opus" by Imagine Dragons
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS (spoilers)(exclamations marks mean a shit ton): There's a lot of PTSD(!), depressive, and anxious Steve(!), as well as Bucky suffering from anxiety and PTSD. Some general warnings: eating disorder, vomit(!), blood, self harm/mutilation (not exactly sure which to categorize it as). Everyone in general is just a little fucked up, I tried to be more realistic than the MCU in that way. IF YOU NEED TO DISCUSS YOUR SPECIFIC TRIGGERS TO KNOW IF YOU CAN READ THIS, DO NOT HESITATE TO MESSAGE ME ON [tumblr](http://smithsonianstucky.tumblr.com) to ask me for details!

**“** You always have someone cover your six,” Steve tells Wanda, “but in your case, you can feel your six.” At the word feel, Steve moves a hand around near his head, insinuating her abilities to manipulate energy with her mind. “I’ll leave it up to you what you want protocol to be with the team.”

Wanda nods, still somewhat shy around the Avengers although she has been learning the material with ease. Nat has been teaching the newbies on the team the physical side of things and Steve the tactical.

The other students in the room—Rhodey, Sam, and Vision—are all occupied with memorizing codes for the comms. Steve knows Rhodey and Sam already know the majority of the abbreviations due to their military backgrounds and Vision from his connection to the Internet. They struggled more with learning all of the technological advances that existed in the intelligence community, as well as catching themselves up on the knowledge that SHIELD had of Hydra and the other organizations they actively fought against unbeknownst to the public.

“Steve!” It’s Natasha, in the doorway of what they have named “The Classroom” despite the fact that it bears little resemblance to any classroom Steve knows. There are no chairs with built in desks, just a long table with surprisingly comfortable rolling chairs and a white wall that they project learning material onto. Usually it is videos of the current Avengers tactics (footage taken by the Iron Man suit during fights) or battle plans during Steve’s long explanations of the tactical advantages to each approach.

“Nat?” Steve is concerned as her voice is carrying more urgency than he’s used to.

Natasha composes herself quickly, noticing that everyone in the room briefly focuses on her. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Steve nods, excusing himself from the room and following her into the hallway. The new SHIELD facility is state of the art, the crisp gray floors and walls not yet showing any marks from day-to-day wear. It’s only been a few weeks since use of it has begun after all. 

Natasha has a Starkpad tucked under one arm and hands it to Steve now. It feels alien in his hands, the sleekness of today’s technology still too modern for his calloused palms.

“This showed up on the CIA database about ten minutes ago,” she tells him, scrolling the screen in his hands down. It is a report from the intelligence units doing damage control in Sokovia alongside Stark’s Relief Foundation. The city won’t be inhabitable for a very long time, so the main focus right now is to find suitable housing outside of the city for the Sokovian citizens until their home can be rebuilt. Because of the monumental task of relocating such a population, a database is being kept of everyone rescued from the rubble, their condition, what medical help they received, and where they are to be relocated. On the Starkpad, one line stands out from the others.

 

**Name:**

**Sex:** Male

**Age:**

**Condition:** Malnourished, lacerations and bruising, metal prosthetic limb

**Relocation:**

**Special Notes:** He disappeared before we could ask any questions, officer attempted pursuit but lost his trail. He was headed for the crater.

 

“I cross checked records from any Sokovian hospitals from before Ultron and a metal prosthetic was never given to any patients, nor noted in their files. No one in Sokovia matches this description unless they never saw a medical professional while living there,” Natasha explains.

“Never thought I’d be thankful you can break patient-doctor confidentiality,” Steve says.

“I tried not to pry, didn’t read anything I didn’t need to,” she replies.

There is a long moment of silence, Steve done handling his surprise with humor. It’s always his first line of defense, to throw out a quip, when he doesn’t know how to respond.

“We can have the jet ready in under twenty minutes,” Natasha tells him. “Just need to check the fuel. It’s enough time to pack a bag and lace your boots.”

“This is the best lead we’ve had since he pulled me from the Potomac.”

Natasha is speechless for a moment, a rarity for her. Steve almost never mentions details of that day in D.C. He barely even speaks Bucky’s name, just uses pronouns. They always know who he is talking about anyways.

“Let’s get Sam,” Steve tells her, handing back the Starkpad and turning back towards the classroom.

 

“What’s the plan of action?” Sam asks when they are ten minutes out from Sokovia.

“We go in under stealth mode, land the closest we can get to the crater, and start looking,” Natasha tells him. It’s perhaps the simplest plan they’ve ever had on a mission, not that this is a normal one.

“And you don’t think anyone is going to think it’s weird that we are here?”

“That’s why we are using stealth and trying not to be seen,” Steve tells him. “Our goal is to get out without anyone but us knowing Bucky was here.”

“And if we can’t find him?” It’s Natasha that asks, unafraid to say what was on all of their minds.

“We’ll find him,” Steve tells her. He can’t consider any other option.

Natasha expertly navigates the plane down amongst the ruined streets, chunks of earth and stone from the meteorite littering what is left of the city. They are in what was a roundabout but is now the only clear spot on the edge of the crater left from Ultron’s attempt at human extinction.

“Sam, you stay and guard the jet. If Stark’s people come by, they will leave you alone but the CIA will ask questions. If they’re CIA, just leave. We can’t risk them looking into anything,” Steve instructs. “Nat, you’re with me.”

“Why does she get to have the fun?” Sam pretends to whine.

“Because she has the best idea of what is going on in Bucky’s head right now,” Steve answers seriously. Sam looks like he thinks he said something wrong.

“Don’t sweat it, I know my reputation,” Nat assures both of them.

 

It’s been eight hours since Natasha found the information in the relief database. It’s all they have to work from, but it’s also outdated information by now.

“He could be anywhere,” Steve says, dismayed after only an hour of walking through the debris.

“Well, is there anywhere you know Bucky would go?” Natasha asks him. She has a Starkpad in her hands, still looking through the database in case evidence of Bucky has appeared again.

“I don’t understand who he is anymore,” Steve tells her.

“But you know Bucky. And he’s still in there.” They’ve stopped walking, Steve looking at his feet. Natasha puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. They’re both wearing civilian clothes, trying not to stand out. The outfit choices are bulky enough though to hide the weapons they both harbor. Steve has a shoulder holster on under his worn jacket. He hopes to not have to use the guns.

“Maybe… maybe if anything looks like our neighborhood in Brooklyn?” Steve says, unsure. “Or perhaps a movie theater? He spent a lot of time at movies when we were younger, taking girls on dates.”

“There is a neighborhood four blocks west that is mostly apartments and a movie theater is another two blocks after that,” Natasha says, scouring the information on the screen in her arms. She does it all one handed, the other rubbing Steve’s back comfortingly. “If he’s looking for supplies of any kind, there is also a convenience store between us and the apartments. And a little family owned grocery store.”

“All worth a look I think,” Steve tells her. “I assume the Winter Soldier is resourceful.” She doesn’t remark on the way Steve seems to have separated Bucky from the Winter Soldier.

“Well, the convenience store is first up. Let’s do this.”

The neighborhood ends up being the correct option. Steve doesn’t know if it is because Brooklyn was full of apartments, small brick ones with rusty fire escapes, or if it was just luck. Natasha spots the figure, seated against the wall in an alley. The neighborhood was decently destroyed by the exploding meteorite, large pieces of earth and debris littering the street and crushing the buildings. The back of the alley is cut off by a collection of debris, gathered by the pitch of the nearby building’s roofs. The dark hair and clothing make Steve’s heart jump, his mind conjuring an image of the Winter Soldier in his combat uniform.

“Does…does he know we are here?” Steve feels ashamed at how nervous his voice sounds.

“I don’t think so,” Nat answers. “Why don’t you approach him? He doesn’t look very…alert.” Steve understands her confusion; the Winter Soldier was a super assassin, a ghost of myth and legend. Anyone who had garnered such a reputation would have skills equal to or above that of the Black Widow. Had it been her in the alley, she would have been aware of them five minutes ago, before they had even entered this district of the city.

“A familiar face will be good,” she tells him. “And even if he doesn’t know you’re Steve, he still will know you from D.C.”

Steve’s stomach does a flip at her sentence but Nat is right, so he cautiously approaches the person who was once his best friend.

They are twenty feet apart when Bucky realizes he is not alone. The crunch of Steve’s feet on the ruined pavement turns Bucky’s head, and his eyes widen in obvious fear.

Steve doesn’t have much experience with animals, but he does know that you don’t want to corner them. That much he did learn from the stray dogs in the Brooklyn alleys, the skinny mutts he always wanted to save because—if he’s going to be honest—they always reminded him of himself. He knows what happens when a scared animal is cornered; they bite.

Bucky is acting just like a terrified dog. He has nothing to gauge situations with besides his basic survival drive and the Pavlovian instinct he has acquired to associate people with pain. Steve can’t blame him for the way he’s acting, the way Bucky is pedaling his compact form into the corner between the building’s wall and the pile of rubble. There is a part of Steve who had been expecting The Winter Soldier, that Bucky would fight or evade in his ghostly way.

The thing is though, Steve doesn’t know how to handle it anymore than if punches were being thrown at his face. Had it been one of the alley dogs, he would leave a plate of the meager scraps from dinner. He at least knows  _ that’s _ not what he should do with Bucky. But it is something to go off of. The easiest, and perhaps only, way to show Bucky that Steve means no harm is to provide him with a way to stay alive. How does one show their intent for that in one action?

Steve settles for a language he knows Bucky understood at one time in his life; he offers a hand. With ten feet between them, Steve’s hope hangs in the balance. He doesn’t think so much has ever been represented by the air space of this alley.

There is a long moment in which Steve doesn’t breath. Or blink. All he does is think. If Bucky flees, what does he do? He can feel Natasha at the alley mouth behind him, waiting and observing. Bucky is serum enhanced too though, and going through or over the rubble behind him isn’t an impossibility. Steve despairs at the idea of Bucky fleeing; he just found him, and he doesn’t know what he will do if he loses him again so soon.

More moments pass, and Steve doesn’t think Bucky is breathing either. His stillness is uncanny; it is the stillness of someone who knows how to be a hunter. It is ironic to their current predicament.

“Buck,” Steve reasons, taking another step forwards. Bucky remains so still Steve isn’t sure if he is actually responsive. If not for his eyes being open, he would think Bucky had lost consciousness.  “Bucky?” Steve takes another step closer.

Steve hears an intake of breath from Natasha behind him, a representation of the nerves she is harboring over the current situation. Somehow, this feels like more is on the line than the entire battle in Sokovia or the terror of Project Insight.

Bucky remains still, eyes locked on Steve’s face. Somewhere deep in his mind, Steve recognizes that eye contact is good; it doesn’t mean he is scared shitless. But if Steve is right about dog body language still being applicable to the situation, then Bucky isn’t comfortable; in fact, he sees Steve as a threat to challenge.

Another few steps, his hand still outstretched, and Steve is a meter from Bucky. “Buck?” he whispers, the name barely passing his lips. He is not sure if Bucky recognizes it, the blue eyes showing no emotion.

Slowly, so slowly that it almost doesn’t register, Bucky begins to raise his arm. His hand moves towards Steve’s and stops, hanging midair. His eyes are focused on Steve’s hand now, the challenge gone. But Steve must make the final move.

Bucky stiffens upon contact, hand momentarily withdrawing before relaxing and letting Steve grasp it firmly. He pulls Bucky to his feet, the action easier than he had expected. In his memory, the Winter Soldier’s mass was close to or equal to his own. Now, there is a noticeable difference.

It’s not until Bucky is on his feet that it becomes apparent how little life he has within him. His knees give, almost pulling both of them over and into the rubble. Steve acts quickly, gripping Bucky’s arm to hold him up. As Steve tightens his hold around Bucky’s torso, he feels bone and notes that there is little material on the Winter Soldier’s body that is not muscle or metal. Odds are, Bucky was only able to be alert for as long as he was off adrenaline and it has now faded from his system.

The sound of Natasha’s boots on the flagstones signal her approach and then she is there, steadying Bucky as well. They wrangle him into Steve’s arms and he has a flashback to a moment, seventy years ago, in a Hydra base pulling Bucky from a cold, metal table and supporting his deadweight body through a weapons base. It creates even more contrast in Steve’s mind between then and now.

“It’s going to be okay Bucky,” Steve assures, shifting Bucky’s weight to secure his arm around his back. His metal arm is around Steve’s shoulders and the cold from it sinks into his skin; one more thing that has changed. He remembers warm, humid nights on Coney Island with a very different arm around his shoulders. Granted, they were both very different then.

“Steve?” Natasha has been talking, but Steve was not listening, too caught up in the past. Her hand is to her ear, listening to her comm. “Steve, there’s a helicopter headed this way. Sam thinks it might be CIA. We need to leave now before they see us down here.”

Steve nods. “Buck, we’re going to get you out of here.” He knows there won’t be a response, not a real one. Bucky just swings his head to glance at Steve and something resembling a nod occurs. Perhaps if he just keeps talking to Bucky like a normal person, it will be true.

 

They make it back to the plane just in time to save Sam from imploding. “When we agreed to go after Bucky, I really didn’t think the fucking CIA would be what we were up against, or that we would be back at the scene of the Avenger’s biggest destruction.”

“Sam, calm down. They’re probably just assessing the damage,” Natasha soothes. “There’s no way they know we are here, it’s not even a Stark jet.”

“No, it’s the damn Avengers jet Iron Man built specifically for your use. Tell me how that’s not better.”

“Because it’s unmarked, and it isn’t registered in their systems,” Steve counters, settling Bucky into a seat and strapping him in. “Not even SHIELD had info on it since it’s technically Stark’s property.” Steve stops talking then, concerned. Bucky doesn’t seem responsive, head lolling slightly and eyes lidded. “Buck?” Steve whispers, crouching so that he is eye level with his friend. Distantly, he registers Sam complaining that an unmarked jet is even worse and looks “sketchy as hell”.

“We need to get food in him, did you notice how thin he is?” Natasha says, suddenly beside Steve.

“You need to fly us out of here. I’ll take care of him,” Steve instructs. His brain has entered mission mode, methodically planning and issuing orders. It’s the easiest way for him to handle the current situation. Plus, he doesn’t like the idea of someone else handling Bucky.

Natasha turns without a word and heads to the front, swinging herself into the pilot’s seat and strapping in, flipping switches and readying the engine.

“What direction did the helicopters go?” she asks Sam, who is seated in the copilot chair.

“South, going pretty fast. If they kept up that pace, they’re already more than ten klicks away.”

“But if they didn’t, they could see us take off. I’m using stealth mode.” Natasha flips a yellow switch installed above her head. There is a gentle hum and Steve knows that the reflective panels coating the plane have been activated. “Strap in Steve, we’re about to take off,” Natasha instructs him, not having to look over her shoulder to know he hasn’t moved from his spot in front of Bucky.

He hesitates a moment, not wanting to move away, but then stands and straps himself into the seat across. His heart begins jackhammering at the thought of taking to the air but he breathes deeply through his nose to soothe the nerves. As they take off he closes his eyes. He is scared to be losing sight of Bucky but he needs the peace of the back of his eyelids to steady his breathing. Natasha is leveling out the plane when it happens.

“’Copter at two o’clock,” Sam says, his calm disposition hiding the light tone of panic behind his words. Steve has only heard it once before, when The Winter Soldier was ripping him from the sky on a helicarrier.

“Nat,” Steve says.

“I’ll get us out of here,” she assures, banking the plane left. They end up with one wing pointed straight at the ground and everyone’s weight pulls at the harnesses strapping them in. This is the moment that Bucky decides to regain consciousness.

If Steve thought that Bucky looked panicked when they first arrived in the alley, it’s nothing compared to now, when he is strapped into a plane, with strangers, that is tilted at a dangerously precarious angle. He begins clawing at the straps, blindly looking for a release. His eyes are wide, pupils blown in fear.

“I don’t think they know we are here,” Sam narrates from the front as Natasha levels the plane out again.

“We should be invisible to all technology right now,” Natasha says as she knocks a lever forwards, increasing their speed. Sam is knocked flat against his seat, Steve and Bucky thrown to the side.

“We better be,” Steve calls her way as he unbuckles himself, moving across the plane to Bucky. He grabs Bucky’s wrist, keeping him from ripping the seatbelt away with his metal arm. Steve isn’t strong enough to actually restrain the cyber limb, but the touch is enough to pause Bucky’s panic. Steve apprehensively keeps his face and neck distanced from the metal arm.

“You’re fine, you’re safe, stop Buck,” Steve tells him as Bucky pulls his arms, halfheartedly trying to escape Steve’s grip. He makes a noise of frustration. “Bucky, relax, it’s okay.” He feels like he’s talking to a child, struggling with a four year old who doesn’t want to sit still. But the stakes are much higher, the situation much more charged.

“Steve, what the hell is going on back there,” Sam calls, glancing over his shoulder and then doing a double take. “Man get back in your seat!”

“Bucky, calm down,” Steve tells him, ignoring Sam.

Natasha pulls the plane up again, gaining more altitude to enter the cloudbank and distance themselves from the helicopter. Steve is able to balance himself for a moment, but then Bucky gives a tug against Steve’s hold and everything goes to shit. Steve rolls down the plane’s floor, eventually crashing into the metal door on the back of the plane. With his injuries from the battle against Ultron not yet healed, it hurts like a bitch. Steve bites back a groan as Natasha turns to see what the noise was.

“Steve, what the hell? Sit down and buckle up!”

“Going, going,” Steve tells her, clawing his way back up the plane and pulling himself into his seat heavily. Bucky watches him with apprehensive eyes, now still against the restraints.

They haven’t leveled out again before Bucky lapses back into his weakened state, another wave of adrenaline having left his body. Steve sits up straighter, trying to watch the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest.

“Do we have fluids in the med kit?” Steve asks.

“If I say yes, does it mean you’re going to unbuckle again and try to reenact Thor in the helicarrier prison cell?”

Steve stays silent, eyes on Bucky. It’s enough to confirm to Natasha that she was right. “He’ll be fine until we’re sure they’re not tailing us. It’ll only be a couple minutes.” Steve balls a fist, hating having to sit and wait, but his back still hurts from hitting the door so he heeds her words.

Eventually, they level out. Sam keeps checking the radar but the helicopter doesn’t seem to have been in pursuit of them.

“Safe?” Steve asks, hands on the release of the buckle.

“Yes, tend to him,” Natasha says, turning on autopilot and standing from her seat.

Steve is thankful for the basic medical training he received from SHIELD as he opens a storage cabinet in the side of the plane marked with a red cross. There is a bag of fluids and sterilized needles in a small drawer. Natasha watches him as he disinfects the back of Bucky’s flesh hand—the antiseptic wipe removing an alarming amount of grime—and then pushing the needle in.

“You don’t think he was in the city when…” Natasha trails off.

“No idea,” Steve responds. “But I do think he would be worse for wear if he had been there when we exploded Ultron’s meteorite. So probably not?”

“Then how did he end up in Sokovia?” Sam inquires, still sitting in shotgun but with his feet resting on Natasha’s vacated chair.

“I think that is the million dollar question,” Steve tells him.

With the autopilot on, it’s safe for them to doze two at a time. Steve fell asleep somewhere over Croatia, before the ocean would be under them for which he is thankful. Sam offered to stay awake, both of them still recovering from the last visit to Sokovia, so Nat tucked herself into one of the fold down bunks near the back of the jet.

“I hate to wake you,” Friday suddenly says and Steve is on his feet faster than his brain can even register that someone has spoken. “But Mr. Stark would like a word.”

“I thought you said Friday was out of the plane’s system since Tony was away,” Steve asks Natasha, who has also jumped awake.

“She was,” Natasha assures him.

“Who the hell is Friday and why is there a disembodied voice?” Sam asks. Bucky is still comatose, but the bag of fluids is significantly lower than before. Steve hopes he will come to soon.

“Tony’s new AI,” Natasha explains. “What does Stark want?” she asks Friday.

“Hello to you too,” Tony’s voice comes over the speakers. “Just curious what fun I’m missing out on if the Avenger’s jet is out of the tower.”

Two sets of eyes glance at Steve. Sam and Nat don’t know how much Steve is willing to share. “Just a little trip,” Steve tells him. “To see an old friend.” Steve knows that Tony will put two-and-two together eventually but he also doesn’t need the whole team knowing the news before they even get back.

“Ah…” Tony responds. “I see?” He obviously doesn’t.

“How’s Italy?” Natasha asks, distracting him.

“Wonderful. Just finished a tour of a vineyard. Think I might dabble in the business, they could use some technological improvements.”

“Of course you think they do,” Steve teases.

“Pepper has successfully restrained me from making plans already but I’m not sure how much longer she will be able to,” Tony confides. “Might be back in the lab soon.”

“Well, we’ll be happy to see you whenever you make your way back to New York,” Natasha tells him, while communicating to Steve with her eyes. She is concerned that Tony will return soon, and Bucky will be there. Steve tries to let her know that it’s okay.

“Have fun crushing grapes,” Steve tells him.

“Cap, the point is that no one has to crush the grapes.”

“I thought you weren’t designing anything yet?”

“Not on paper. But soon. Peace out girl scouts”

The speakers turn off and Tony is gone. Steve breathes a sigh of relief.

“So are we hiding him in the tower or…?” Sam asks.

“For now, yes. I don’t want a welcoming committee,” Steve tells him, eyes turning to Bucky’s still form. “He couldn’t handle that.”

 

Steve doesn’t sleep again during the flight. Once he realizes that he will not be returning to dreams after Tony’s interruption, he tells Sam to hit the hay. It is one in the morning after all. Sam obliges and takes the bunk under Natasha, casting a concerned look at Steve before closing his eyes.

Physically, the rest of the flight is uneventful but mentally, it’s a battle. Steve seats himself across from Bucky and watches the fluid bag drip, desperately trying to not look out the windshield to the endless ocean below. He fails twice. After the second glance at the churning sea, bile and the protein bar he’d eaten an hour ago end up in the trash compactor beside the built-in minifridge.

 

“I feel like I’m in a movie,” Sam tells them.

“It’s just the Avengers tower,” Nat states, striding ahead to open the door out of the plane hanger. Friday gets there first and opens the door seemingly of its own accord.

“Exactly, it’s the Avengers tower! Thor has been here! His hair has blessed this building!”

“Sam he’s slumping,” Steve warns, redirecting Sam’s attention to the half concious person supported between them. The cold, metal arm is around Steve’s shoulders and he’s resisting the urge to flinch away from the contact, and not just because of the temperature.

Tony had sent Friday into the plane again as they had been descending into New York. “Mr. Stark would like you to know that the thirty ninth floor is reinforced for the Hulk and should be sufficient for housing anyone of enhanced strength.”

There had been a moment of silence, in which the only sound had been the ragged breaths Bucky had started upon their descent.

“Well, Tony put it together quicker than I expected,” Steve announced, easing the tension. “Let’s just hope everyone else doesn’t know as well.”

Now, they were headed to the 39 th floor. Natasha was walking ahead, making sure the path was clear for the three men stumbling along behind her, but no one seemed to be awake. Steve and Natasha were after all the only ones calling the tower home at the moment, and even then it was only about half the time. Tony and Pepper were on their well deserved extended vacation, Thor was on Asgard, Clint was enjoying time with his family, and Banner had yet to be found. All of the new recruits permanently lived at the SHIELD base upstate, living and breathing Avengers training for the next couple of months under the guidance of Steve and Natasha. The only other person who made the trip between the Avengers facility and Stark tower was Agent Hill, as her cover was still as a member of Stark’s HR team.

“So this room is Hulk-proof?” Sam asks, glancing around, after depositing Bucky on the bed. Steve doesn’t answer, just watches Bucky’s chest rise and fall for a moment. His flesh arm moves feebly, still conscious somehow but not able to bring himself from the murky depths of his weakening bodily state.

“I wish we had a doctor that could see him,” Steve says, voicing his thoughts, “but there really isn’t a clearance level for this. The Winter Soldier is above any clearance.”

“Can count the number of people who know the identity of the Winter Soldier on just my fingers,” Natasha remarks. “What about Stark’s medical team? The ones who took out his chest reactor?”

“They were involved with SHIELD,” Steve tells her. “And I don’t trust even the ones who are still left.”

“Are you telling me I’ve been living in a building of potential Hydra threats?” Sam asks.

“That’s why your room is protected by an eye scanner,” Steve tells him. “We had a large influence on the design of that facility after everything in D.C.”

They all watch Bucky for a moment before Friday chimes in. “I can run basic scans on Mr. Barnes now if you would like.” Her voice volume is lower than normal, her understanding of the situation already terrifyingly great for an AI.

“Please do,” Steve requests of her.

“I will have results in exactly nine minutes and thirteen seconds.”

“Enough time to grab a snack,” Natasha tells them. Steve allows himself to be herded from the room, closing the door behind him with a last glance at Bucky lying prone on the bed.

Sam makes toast for everyone and puts crunchy peanut butter on it. He swears that it is the only thing you can eat at such a time of the morning. They sit around the small round table off the kitchen and eat in silence.

Steve stares at the clock on the microwave and thinks about how he isn’t tired despite it being five in the morning. He also counts down the minutes until Friday can tell them what is wrong with Bucky.

“Steve,” Natasha suddenly warns. Steve hadn’t realized he was bouncing his leg, shaking the entire table. The glass of water in front of Natasha had sloshed onto the wood and she wipes it up with her sweatshirt sleeve. Steve realizes that neither of them ever put their weapons away as he notices the subtle shape of a knife strapped to her forearm.

“Two more minutes is all,” she tells him. It unnerves Steve sometimes how well Natasha seems to know him. It makes sense though; she is the person he spends the most time with, some by choice and some due to training the new Avengers together. Sam is the close second, but not nearly as perceptive a person as Nat is.

Finally,  _ finally _ Friday tells them that the scans are done. She begins to report the results as Steve strides back to the bedroom. “The most prominent issue he faces is his starvation,” she begins. Steve stops two feet outside the bedroom.

“Is that a harsh choice of words or the truth?” he asks her. His heart rate has accelerated to a worrying point, one he is not used to reaching since the serum, unless he is in the thick of battle.

“A little bit of both,” Friday elaborates. “Mr. Barnes has gone without sustenance for long enough that his kidneys have been affected but should he regain a normal diet, he will see little to no lasting issues from it.”

Steve breathes a sigh of relief that is apparently audible in the kitchen as Natasha’s chair pushes away from the table and she hurries after him. Steve opens the door and enters the bedroom and she enters a few steps behind him.

“What else?” Steve asks. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed beside Bucky who is still prone but thinks better of it at the last minute and seats himself instead in one of the suede armchairs past the bed and closer to the window. The bedroom is bigger than the apartment Steve and Bucky had shared in Brooklyn.

“If his healing rate is the same as yours, it appears that he broke a rib under one week ago.”

“And it’s healing?”

“Yes, it is almost healed and appears to have done so completely on it’s own.”

“And there’s no other injuries?” If he had been in enough of a fight to break a rib, Steve thinks the odds of other damage is high.

“No, but the amount of scar tissue in his body makes scans quite difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

“Due to the number of injuries Mr. Barnes has sustained over his life, he has scar tissue buildup in large quantities. My scans cannot see some of his joints, especially that of his metal arm, as there are too many layers. Many of his bones also have calcium deposits larger than I have seen before due to repetitive breakage.”

Steve takes a moment to think about what Friday is telling him. Bucky has been to hell and back. “How many times has he broken a bone?” Steve isn’t sure he wants the answer but he still asks.

“From what I can tell, upwards of eighty times. That does not include his fingers however, which appear to have been operated upon at one time. My guess would be that in his line of work, they were broken enough times that someone decided to operate and remove the scar tissue and calcium build up, otherwise he would not have been able to handle weaponry to the same degree as originally.”

Steve takes in a sharp breath. Natasha moves closer, leaning over the back of the chair and slipping her deceptively strong arms around him. Steve moves a hand to her forearm, gripping it to keep it there.

“What else?”

“Much of his skeleton has been reinforced with metal. It appears that his spine and left shoulder were reinforced to support the metal prosthetic, while his fingers contain metal plating following the operation on them. As well as one ankle containing screws from a bad break.”

Bucky had succeeded at his missions under Hydra, but at great cost it seemed. Steve supposed even Bucky, after everything, couldn’t dodge every blow.

“So what do we do?”

“Mr. Rogers, there is also something else I would like to alert you of,” Friday says. Despite being an AI, she sounds almost nervous.

“Yes?” Steve coaxes and Natasha’s arms tighten around him. They can both tell this isn’t going to be good news.

“The prosthetic houses three different kill switches for Mr. Barnes.” Steve’s reaction is so physical he almost misses the details. A sob wrenches from his chest and he shakes Natasha’s embrace, suddenly wishing she wasn’t in the room. “One is a poison wired to his bloodstream, one is a small explosive, and the third is a small motor for delivering an electrical shock. It is hard to determine if the third is designed for recalibration of Mr. Barnes—as he was trained via electroshock—or if the voltage would be high enough to kill him. His anatomy is not entirely clear to me as I do not know if he is comparable to your own post-serum body or not.”

Steve’s face is in his hands, trying to cover the onslaught of emotion he is feeling. Hydra had literally installed a kill switch in his best friend, a way to eliminate him should he go rogue—a possibility that had become reality. Steve had just found him only to lose him at any moment.

“Steve? Steve look at me.” Natasha is kneeling in front of him, holding his wrists to gently pull them away from his face. She releases them immediately when he obliges.

“If Hydra had wanted him dead, they would have already done it. They want him alive Steve. That will keep him safe,” Natasha tells him, eyes earnest.

Steve is experiencing something akin to hyperventilating and Bucky is moving on the bed. If Natasha didn’t know better, she would think Bucky was reacting to the sound of Steve’s stress.

“Steve, breathe. We’ll get Tony in here, we’ll figure it all out. We’ve got this. They don’t know where he is.”

“But what if they do?” The strain behind Steve’s voice is unexpected, something Natasha has never heard there before. She doesn’t know what happened to the calm, assured Steve that goes into battle. “At any moment, he could be dead. It just takes the right Hydra agent putting it together, figuring out where he is. What if someone saw the jet in Sokovia? What if someone saw us there? What if—“

Steve is up and out of the chair then, pushing past Natasha and sprinting around the end of the bed to hurry into the bathroom.

Natasha makes to follow, worried, when she hears the sound of the toast coming back up. She pauses, unsure if her help is wanted or not. The retching only continues for a moment longer however and the sound of the toilet flushing follows. She pokes her head in to see Steve leaning his back against the wall across from the toilet. He is sweating and his breathing doesn’t seem under control yet.

Natasha silently wets a washcloth from the little basket beside the sink (Stark Tower always has small amenities like this; Tony’s housekeepers out do themselves on the daily) and wetting it in the sink before seating herself beside Steve and pressing it to his forehead. He thanks her under his breath and takes a hold of it himself to keep it there.

They sit in silence for a minute, Natasha leaning gently against Steve’s side and running a hand up and down his arm. When she had first met Steve, she wouldn’t have thought of him as someone who liked physical contact. What she had discovered since then was simply that he had not trusted anyone for a long time after coming out of the ice. In fact, once he trusted you, he was a bit of a snuggler. There had been many a movie night and drunken festivities amongst the team at the tower to prove it.

Steve decides on his own time when to move. His breathing is normal again (although still a little fast by Natasha’s judgment) and the erratic look to his eyes settles when he makes to stand up.

As he offers a hand and pulls Natasha to her feet too, a smile breaks out over his face, but it is not one that touches his eyes. “I didn’t know super soldiers could have panic attacks.” There he was again, covering his “weak” moments with humor, hiding behind a façade of subtle wit. From what Natasha knows, it was something he had always done (when he had come out of the ice and Fury had suggested he be invited to join the Avengers, she had scoured his SHIELD file) but had begun to make the quips more often since being around Tony. Sometimes, they were not good influences on one another.

When they return to the bedroom, Steve goes on autopilot. Natasha stands aside as he unlaces Bucky’s chunky boots and slips them off, followed by his socks. Then he removes some of the bulky combat gear he is wearing; still his one-armed jacket and straps for weapons, although those seem to have disappeared over time.

Steve finds several knives in his belt and one switchblade. He hands these to Natasha. “Keep them but hide them,” he tells her before turning back to Bucky. He has shifted some in his sleep as Steve tries to make him comfortable, but has not awoken. Natasha knows they can help him, that he will get better, but in the back of her mind she is worried. How had he become so malnourished?

Steve is worried too, as it becomes easier to see Bucky’s body with the disappearing layers. Beneath the combat gear, Bucky has on a dark gray Henley (also one-sleeved) and the muscle definition he has lost is apparent. Natasha had known the Winter Soldier in his prime only, so the difference is stark to her. Steve had known Bucky pre-serum and pre-war but he still looks shocked too. The muscles are more wiry, some of their mass gone. His flesh arm is littered with scars too, slashes from knives and a few that are obviously bullet holes. Steve sees Natasha’s hand move to her hip where Bucky shot her those years ago. She shudders.

“Think another bag of fluids will do him any good?” Steve asks.

“Should, we can’t even try to give him food until we know he is hydrated. Depending on how long it has been since he has eaten real food, that could be detrimental.” Natasha’s knowledge of medical is impressive, even to someone else who works for SHIELD. With the KGB, she was taught how to survive no matter what. She could be dropped in the middle of the Sahara Desert and make it out alive. “I’ll fetch another bag from Tony’s medical floor.”

Steve is glad she offered to retrieve the fluids, as he doesn’t want to leave Bucky’s side. Once Natasha disappears through the doorframe, Steve tackles getting Bucky under the sheets; it feels to impersonal to just leave him on top the covers. It is a challenge, as Bucky is deadweight at the moment, but by the time Nat returns, Steve has Bucky under the sheets, the thick comforter folded and tossed onto one of the armchairs. Steve doesn’t want Bucky to overheat with too many layers.

“Call Stark,” Natasha tells Steve as she rolls in a stand for the fluids. “I’ll take care of this.”

“You sure?” Steve asks, eyes flicking to Bucky’s metal arm.

“He’s been out for hours Steve.”

“Okay.”

“Spangles! Didn’t get your fill of me yesterday?”

“Tony, I’ve asked you not to use that nickname probably five times.”

“I know, that’s why I use it.”

Steve pulls away from the phone for a moment. “Why am I doing this again?” he asks Natasha.

“Steve, just tell him what’s going on,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And Tony,” she calls, raising her voice so he will hear it over the phone. “Play nice.”

“Okay, okay. So what’s up Cap?”

“How secure is this call?”

“C’mon Steve, really? It’s me.”

“Okay, okay. I just needed to make sure.”

“So what problem are you having with terminator? Besides the part where his assignment is to kill you.”

“Well he hasn’t really been up to the task.”

“Need a mechanic?” Tony sounds very interested, in the way he does when tackling any new idea or project. “I’d love to lend my expertise, although I can’t guarantee your safety should I succeed.”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. Hydra installed some… fail safes.”

“In the arm?”

“Friday said it was a part of the mechanics.”

“And I assume the underlying panic in your voice stems from the fact that these are remote detonated?” Tony may pretend to hate people, but he could read them.

“Bullseye.”

“Well, here is a fun fact for you. The Hulk suite has thick walls for Hulk-proofness, and a happy side effect of such walls is the ability to keep signals from entering the room.”

“Then how am I on the phone with you right now?”

“You don’t think I’d keep my own phone signal out of my tower do you?”

“Good point. So he’s safe in here?”

“So long as he doesn’t leave that floor until we take a look at that arm, no one is getting splattered,” Tony assures.

“Maybe…don’t word it like that,” Steve asks.

“Gotcha, lifelong friends, inseparable on the playground and battlefield. Probably a little insensitive.”

“Little bit.”

“I’ll see you in six hours.”

“I thought you were in Italy?”

“And you don’t think my suit can fly faster than a plane?”

There’s a pause. “See you at noon then.”

“I’ll pick us up some Thai for lunch.”

“It’s a date.”

The line goes dead and Steve turns back to the room. Natasha is seated in the chair not taken by the extra bedding, playing with the switchblade Steve confiscated from Bucky earlier.

“You guys are cute sometimes,” she teases. “ _ ’It’s a date.’ _ ”

“Maybe I should have warned him that I tend to be seventy years late for those,” Steve ponders.

“Nah, he’s heard the stories. He’ll expect it.”

There is silence for a moment. Steve looks at Bucky, the slow drip of the IV and the sheets pulled up to his chest. Natasha watches Steve.

“So when do we get worried that he hasn’t woken up?”

“Who knows the last time he slept. I think you give him some level of comfort. He did take your hand after all. He wanted help in some way. I would guess he tried to sleep as little as possible, not let himself be vulnerable. This might be the first time he’s done more than catnap since the helicarriers.”

Steve looks back at Bucky and thinks about that. If it’s true, if Natasha’s experience can hold true to Bucky’s, then Steve thinks he will probably sleep for days.

“C’mon Steve, it’s time for you to sleep too.”

“I’m fine, I want to be here in case he wakes.”

“Don’t try to fool me, I know you never sleep on flights.” Once again, Natasha proves to be more observant day-to-day than Steve gives her credit for.

“I’m setting my alarm for 11:30.”

“I would expect no less from an army man.” Steve lets Natasha guide him from the room, steering him to the elevator where they both head to the Avengers floors. They wake Sam and make him come along too, from where he fell asleep on the sofa of the Hulk floor.

When Stark rebuilt the tower, he had mini apartments built for each of them. Three floors of the tower—the fortieth through the forty-third—are all living areas for the team. The last two of those are the Avenger’s party room--which Tony had insisted was needed for celebratory team purposes--and the loft that houses Banner and Stark’s labs. The party floor isn’t used on the daily, but when it does get use it usually takes a beating. Especially when Ultron decides to crash the party. Steve tries not to think about that particular night whenever he is up there.

Sam, Steve, and Natasha all get off on the 41st floor. The apartments for the newest members are still being built, one floor below where they are now. Sam is opting to use Clint’s bed for now as they all know he won’t mind. Before heading to her apartment, Natasha looks over her shoulder and gives Steve a meaningful look that says  _ I’ll know if you don’t sleep _ . Steve figures she will ask Friday to report his activities to her.

Steve heads to his own apartment, pushing aside the heavy wooden door. The floor above them is where the living room and kitchen are, common areas for all of them. It is like living in a frat house with all your friends, or so Steve imagines from the time he had been forced to watch  _ Neighbors _ . James Franco’s smile had come to annoy him by the end of the film.

It is a unique set up they have though; they all share the real kitchen and real living room but have minis of their own. It is like living in hotel rooms, but very spacious ones. There is a kitchenette in each (mini fridge, microwave, Keurig) and a small seating area with its own TV. The team had gotten close enough over the last couple years though that they spent the majority of their time in the main living space. Steve only stayed in his room when he was exhausted or if was injured after a mission. Otherwise, he mingled with everyone else.

Steve walks through his personal kitchen area, hesitating for a moment to think about trying to eat something and deciding against it. The back of his mind is on a constant worry loop about Bucky and he doubts his stomach will settle enough. Instead, he goes to his bathroom and takes a quick shower, washing off the dust of the ruined city and the grime of long travel. He throws his dirty clothes into the laundry shoot. As Tony had explained it, the clothes “zip through the tower and down to the housekeeping floor.” Steve is a little disturbed by the efficiency, as the clothes are usually clean within an hour. He also doesn’t like that he doesn’t know who is washing his boxers but it’s a small issue in the grand scheme of things. He just knows that occasionally he comes back to his apartment to find a laundry basket outside the door and his shirts hung in the doorway.

When he walks back into the bedroom, still running a towel over his hair, he dramatically falls face first onto the bed. He is tempted to scream into the pillow for a moment, to relieve some of the stress he is feeling, but decides against it. Natasha’s apartment shares some walls with his and he expects that she would hear him.

Before Steve knows it, he is asleep. It’s the soundest he has slept in a long, long time.

 

Steve’s alarm goes off too soon, jolting him out of a dream that he immediately cannot remember. He rolls to his side, slapping a hand on the alarm clock to silence its brash ringing. Tony makes fun of him for having an actual alarm clock still (“Just use Friday, or your phone. There are so many options that aren’t archaic”) but Steve likes feeling like  _ something _ is the same as his place in Brooklyn all those years ago.

The first thing Steve wants to do is check in on Bucky. He debates for a moment if it’s too much to pop down to the Hulk floor, then decides it isn’t because what if Bucky woke up while he was asleep? He should be there. Steve begins long strides to the elevator, not even caring that he is still in his pajama pants and a loose t-shirt. He likes his plaid pants anyways, they make him feel like he lives a normal life.

Friday speaks up as he presses the button. “Mr. Rogers,” she tells him. “I have kept tabs on Mr. Barnes and he has not awoken yet.”

“Please call me Steve,” he corrects her, unable to stand the jokes that get made by Clint whenever Friday calls him Mr. Rogers. Apparently it’s from some TV show his kids watch. “And thank you for letting me know.”

“Of course Steve.”

“And you will let me know if he wakes up before Tony gets here?”

“Of course.”

When the elevator arrives, he instead goes up one floor, to the kitchen.

“Is the fridge stocked?” He asks. Since Tony has been vacationing with Pepper (although she was still running Stark Industries, just off of laptops and Starkpads for the time being) the only ones at the tower had been Steve and Natasha. He wasn’t sure who the staff had even been grocery shopping for since the two of them were splitting their time.

“Modestly,” Friday told him. “Mr. Stark tries to waste as little as possible but also wants there to be food for you and Ms. Romanoff when you stay. I have calculated the exact things to stock and in what amounts based off of your eating habits to ensure next to nothing has to be thrown away.”

“I’m not sure if I should be impressed or creeped out,” Steve admits.

“I will not take offense to the latter.”

“Well I guess that’s good.”

Steve makes a cup of coffee, noticing that Tony has switched the brand of K-Cups to the ones that are biodegradable, then scrambles himself some eggs. It is how he has always preferred them. Natasha waltzes in, jeans and comfy sweater on, as he is plating them and Steve hands it to her before grabbing more eggs from the fridge.

“Are you sure?” Nat asks.

“Scrambled eggs take about two minutes to make. I’m sure.” They exchange small smiles before he sets to scrambling the next batch and then sits himself beside her on the barstools that line the counter top. There is a large dining table right behind them but they only ever use it for “serious business” as Clint calls it when they need to have a meeting. The informality of living together is nice after so many protocols and orders in the field.

“Incoming,” Natasha says, eyes on the window. Steve looks up to see a gold and red spec zooming towards the tower. They watch Tony swoop upwards, towards the landing pad another floor up and out of their view through the windows.

Steve shovels the rest of the eggs down, gulping the glass of orange juice he had poured (a pleasant discovery he had made after coming out of the ice), and heads up a floor to greet Tony.

Twelve thirty finds Tony and Steve in the lab on the top floor, looking through the scans Friday took of Bucky’s arm. Tony is moving the hologram so fast, spinning it to see the wiring from every possible angle, that Steve can’t keep up and ends up averting his eyes before he gets too dizzy. The energy drink Tony consumes, a tall can that says “Monster” on it, doesn’t seem to be helping the issue. Tony is addicted to them and Steve doesn’t understand why as they smell like kitchen cleaner.

“Looks like everything is wired into a kill switch, all three possibly go at once to ensure it effective. I suppose there is a chance something could come disconnected in the arm and a backup would be necessary, but this thing is state of the art. Fat chance any of it won’t work, this is just overkill. Seriously, three ways to kill a guy?”

Steve doesn’t think Tony is taking breaths between the words, let alone the sentences. “Stark, can you disconnect it or no?”

“Yes, definitely. Just have to see the actual arm. Has he woken up yet or still in screensaver mode?”

“You’re lucky SHIELD taught me how to use a computer or that joke would be over my head,” Steve remarks. “And he is still out if Friday hasn’t said anything.”

“Still in bed,” Friday chimes in. “I have been monitoring his heart rate and it is steady and slow, very relaxed.”

“Good, think we can do it now?”

Steve is surprised. “Do you really want to take the risk of poking around in that arm when he could wake up?”

“I can neutralize the arm,” Tony tells him. “Simple EMP bug on it and he won’t be able to move it if he does wake. Easy peasy.”

“There is another arm you know. It might be less strong but still a threat. Although I did take away all of his knives.”

“That’s like taking candy from a baby!”

“A baby can’t kill you with candy.”

As they speak, Tony moves around the lab, collecting the items he will need. “Touche. Let’s head down, I need to get a lot of equipment moved since he can’t leave that floor. Push this for me will you Stretch Armstrong?”

Tony points to a large toolbox, one of the fancy ones with wheels on the bottom and about fifteen drawers. It rattles as Steve uses his toe to unlock the wheels and begins rolling it in the direction of the elevator. Tony’s arms are full of gadgets Steve can’t even guess the use of as he leads the way.

It’s in the elevator that Friday alerts them. “Sirs, I do not mean to alarm you but Mr. Barnes is waking up.”

Steve and Tony share a glance. “Does he seem…okay?” Steve asks. He is not sure how Friday will be able to tell but he needs to know.

“Mr. Barnes heart rate is normal for the moment but he is still waking. If my calculations are correct, there is a ninety six percent chance that it will be increasing within the next thirty seconds.”

“Friday do not let him leave that floor,” Tony barks.

“Understood Sir.”

Steve jabs the floor button in the elevator. They are only moments from the floor but he needs the lift to be faster.

When the doors ping open, all is still in the apartment. Steve holds a hand up to warn Tony to hang back; if anything won’t startle Bucky right now it is Steve. He walks through, torn between silence or making his footsteps purposefully audible; he is not sure which will bring out a worse case scenario.

Steve settles on dragging his feet along the rug in the sitting area as he crosses the space to the door of the bedroom. It is cracked how he left it but Steve can’t see anything inside, just the lamp and nightstand between the bed and the bathroom door.

Inside the room, Bucky has moved from the mattress. Steve immediately notices the way the sheets are crumpled, like he leapt off the bed. The IV is also hanging loose from the stand, Bucky having removed it from his hand upon waking. Then Steve focuses and sees Bucky. He has moved one of the armchairs closer to the window and is now stood on it. He has his metal arm raised, fingers clenched in a fist facing the glass pane. Bucky is facing Steve now, a look of fear flashing across his features before he schools them into a calm, collected stare. His intentions are clear though; he was going to try break the window to escape.

“Buck,” Steve warns. He assumes Bucky can’t break the glass, as it is made to keep the Hulk in, but Steve isn’t sure what will happen to his hand if he  _ does _ punch it. “Move away from the window, you don’t need to run.”

To Steve’s surprise Bucky complies, stepping off the chair. If it is out of heeding Steve’s words or a compulsion for following orders is unapparent. Bucky remains on the other side of the room however, his shoulders tense. It’s the furthest he can be from Steve.

“Where am I?” Bucky asks. It is the first time Steve has heard Bucky’s voice since the helicarrier. Then, it had been yelling, sharp. Now, it is soft and it feels like a punch to Steve’s gut. It is also broken, his speech pattern unlike Steve remembers. He has been through a lot since D.C., that much is apparent.

“New York,” Steve tells him. “We’re in a safe place.”

“How did I get here?” Steve can’t tell if Bucky remembers Sokovia or not. There is a moment of silence while Steve assesses Bucky’s mental condition, how much he can recall of the last day, but then Bucky fills in the details. “Was there… a plane?”

“Yes, we flew you back here,” Steve says and then immediately regrets his word choice. Bucky’s eyes dart around the room, looking through the doorway behind Steve and at the entrance to the bathroom. The “we” had been a mistake; now he knows there are strangers in the building.

“It’s okay, they’re my friends,” Steve tells him.

Bucky’s eyes flash with some sort of recognition. There is a long moment before he speaks, lips parting in preparation for speaking. “You’re my friend?”

The verbatim quote knocks the wind out of Steve. Bucky phrased it as a question but Steve recognizes the line he told him on the helicarrier. Tender tears threaten Steve’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Steve tells Bucky, voice thick. “I am.” Steve moves further into the room, a few steps closer to the person he had once known better than himself.

There is a moment where Bucky simply looks at Steve, as if he is evaluating him. Bucky’s head cocks slightly as he thinks. Despite his physical build, Steve feels as though he lacks any threat; he is barefoot, without any weapons, in plaid pajama pants. If anything, he looks like he’s ready to go back to bed.

“Cap, how we doing in there?” Tony calls. It breaks the peaceful spell the room is under.

Bucky’s hand flies to his waist, exactly where the switchblade had been before Steve disarmed him. When he realizes his utter lack of weapons, Bucky’s eyes zero in on the objects in the room: a vase with fake flowers, a coffee table book about revolutionary thinkers, two table lamps. Steve watches his eyes take in each object, almost too fast to track, and then back on the table lamp nearest him. It is made of metal.

“Buck!” Steve yells as Bucky lunges for it, as though it will stop him. Steve full well knows it won’t.

Suddenly Steve is faced with a very different Bucky; there is steel behind his eyes and his body is ready; weight on his toes, eyes narrowed, pupils blown, knees bent. And armed with a hefty lamp.

“Steve?” Tony asks, alarm in his voice. It might be one of the only times Tony has ever referred to him without a nickname. Tony makes the mistake of darting into view, startling everyone.

The lamp is thrown in a spiraling motion, the trajectory perfect. By Steve’s own calculations, the heavy base will collide with Tony’s head dead on. Steve jumps, intercepting and knocking it from the air. It crashes to the floor, denting the hardwood as the bulb breaks. Glass shatters across the floor, creating a minefield by the door.

Bucky is weaponless again and leaps across the bed to grab the other lamp. Steve intercepts him, using his body to knock Bucky’s reaching metal arm away and then clasping it in his hand.

“Buck, it’s okay,” Steve tells him. They grapple, the metal arm stronger than Steve’s own. He is pressed back, the nightstand digging into the back of his legs, as Bucky strains. From standing on the edge of the bed, he has the advantage of height with which to fight Steve, the favorable position letting Bucky slowly overpower Cap.

Steve knows that trying to match him with just strength will not work, so he twists and uses Bucky’s weight against him, pulling him from the bed. As he lands, Steve moves to sweep his legs out from under him, but Bucky evades, swinging one of his own around and catching Steve’s ankle. As he stumbles, Bucky twists and yanks his arm around and behind, latching his own hand to Steve’s wrist in the process so that he is forced to follow. Steve’s shoulder pops and a jolt of pain shoots through his body as it is dislocated.

And then Bucky begins to slump. Steve catches him with his good arm, lowering Bucky to the bed as his legs give and his eyes focus on something past Steve’s shoulder. After Bucky has settled onto the bed, eyes flitting shut, Steve glances behind himself to see Natasha in the doorway with a dart gun.

“Who knew Tony has tranquilizer,” she elaborates. “Well, actually Friday knew.”

“Friday called you?” Steve asks, voice thick with strain as his shoulder throbs. Tony is behind Natasha, one of his Iron Man gauntlets covering his right hand. The pulsar is glowing, like Tony had revved it up right before Natasha had arrived.

“She let me know there was a situation and exactly where the tranqs are kept.”

“Good job Friday,” Stark praises, a personal pat on the back considering that he developed the AI.

“If Mr. Barnes metabolism is comparable to that of Steve, he will be asleep for forty five minutes,” Friday tells them.

“Just enough time to learn how to handle a brainwashed super soldier,” Tony quips.

“Hey, you’re the one that left the elevator,” Steve reminds him.

“I only called from it, then left it when you yelled and there was a bunch of scrambling noises. Apparently for a lamp.” They all glance at the broken light on the floor.

“First things first,” Natasha says, picking her way through the glass. “We need to take a look at that shoulder.”

Tony of all people ends up sweeping the glass aside so that Steve can actually leave the room. He makes a mental note to never be without shoes again. They head back up to the Avengers floor where Tony calls his chiropractor. For a handsome fee, the doctor blows off his lunch hour at the café two blocks over and swings by the tower to put Steve’s shoulder back into place.

“Ice and pain pills,” the doctor suggests after they explain Steve’s accelerated healing. “Normally a person needs physical therapy but if that many bullets only had you in the hospital for three days then I think you’ll be fine.”

Steve nods and thanks him, Tony pays the bill with some app on his phone (“Don’t give me that look Cap, I don’t care about money”), and then they settle around the kitchen counter to discuss.

“Well, I think it’s obvious you won’t be able to work on his arm for a while,” Steve resigns.

“We could just tranq him some more,” Tony offers.

“We’re not messing with his arm without his consent,” Steve says. An hour ago he had been up for whatever got the kill switches out the quickest but now that he has seen the way Bucky reacts to something unpredictable--like the voice from an unknown person--he can’t do it. Steve won’t violate the little bit of trust Bucky has in Steve. “As long as you’re sure a signal can’t reach him on that floor, then we wait.”

“One hundred percent sure,” Tony tells him.

“So what do we do when he’s up again?” Natasha asks. “Do we think he will go straight back to aggression?”

“It’s not aggression, it’s fear,” Steve tells them. “You didn’t see him before Tony came in; he is terrified. He’s masking it but I know him.”

“So he needs familiarity,” Sam says. He had been woken by Friday at the same time as Natasha but had stayed upstairs so as to not add more people to the mix on the Hulk floor. “He needs something that can act as a security blanket.”

“Well, you are about the same age as any grandmother’s afghan,” Tony tells Steve.

“Wait, did I miss something here?” Steve asks, knitting his eyebrows in confusion.

“You’re the only familiar thing we’ve got,” Tony says. “I sold all my 1940’s relics in the annual garage sale.”

“The only thing that got me through my first months after leaving the KGB was that I knew Clint was on my side,” Natasha tells Steve. She is leaning over the counter across from where he sits on a stool, hands clasped in front of him. She reaches out and covers them with hers. “He needs you right now more than anything.”

“Except maybe food,” Tony notes. “I think I could see his ribs through his shirt.”

Steve pulls one hand away from Natasha and rubs it over his face, a stress reflex. “I don’t even know if he remembers me… from before all this,” Steve says. He doesn’t know if his voice has ever sounded so small.

“Even if he doesn’t remember,” Natasha tells him, “He still knows you’re on his side. He trusted you in Sokovia, he will trust you now.”

It’s quiet for several minutes, save for the bubbling sound of the Keurig heating up. Tony puts a mug under it and pops a new K-Cup in, brewing a bold dark roast and handing it to Steve.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, blowing on the surface. He is surprised that Tony knows that he likes his coffee black.

A glance at the clock on the microwave tells Steve that Bucky will be awake in fifteen minutes if Friday’s guess was correct. “I should be there  _ when _ he wakes up this time,” Steve says, standing and taking the coffee with him. “I’m sure Friday will tell you if anything…bad happens.”

“I’ll have a tranquilizer on hand,” Tony promises. Steve isn’t sure if he appreciates the joke but at least Tony is trying.

Steve heads downstairs, coffee in his hand. Steam rises from the surface, gently warming his hands. It is a sensation he loves.

The doors ding open and Steve steps out, torn for a moment between checking on Bucky immediately or waiting on the sofa. He decides to poke his head into the bedroom, where Bucky is still slumped on the bed. Steve sets his cup on the side table, now lacking a lamp, and arranges Bucky more comfortably. He half expects the movement to wake Bucky but he continues to doze. 

Steve then returns to the living room with his coffee, settling onto the couch and putting his feet (now with shoes) onto the coffee table. He glances around the room for the first time, taking in the subtle decorations and modern furniture. Tony must really not care about money if he’s willing for this to get crushed by the Hulk. And now potentially Bucky.

The dart gun is leaning up against the island in the kitchen, Natasha having left it in the apartment for good measure. Steve hates that it is there, that the gun might be necessary again, but also finds comfort in its presence. He isn’t sure what would have happened if Natasha hadn’t arrived earlier. Something tells him that Bucky could have overpowered him. The subtle ache in his shoulder reminds him of that. It also reminds him to grab an ice pack from the freezer in the kitchen. He wraps it in a towel and props it between his shoulder and the back of the sofa.

Steve ends up flipping the television on and watching the news, learning about the crime that happened last night in New York. There have been a lot of shooting again lately. He sighs, always dismayed that this is not quite the city he remembers.

Turning on the TV had purposes other than entertainment though; with the volume turned just loud enough to reach the bedroom, Bucky will know he is here when he wakes.

It works. After around twenty minutes, Steve slowly feels himself grow an itch, the overwhelming urge to check over his shoulder. He feels eyes. Sure enough, Bucky is standing in the doorway of the bedroom, stoic and still.

“Hey,” Steve greets him, slowly getting to his feet. “How do you feel?” Steve knows Friday is keeping an eye on everything, that she will alert the others immediately should he need them, but he can’t help worry that he is in over his head.

Bucky doesn’t reply. His eyes just remain laser focused on Steve. They hold a different kind of intensity than earlier, a sharp focus rather than a careful curiosity. With a sharp clarity, Steve realizes that Bucky might be associating getting knocked out by the dart directly with Steve.

“It’s okay Buck, I am the only one here and nothing is going to happen to you,” Steve tells him. He raises his hands, showing his unarmed state. He purposefully doesn’t look toward the dart gun. He doesn’t know if Bucky has noticed it or not.

The silence remains, quiet but for the anchor on the news discussing the grand opening of some new skyscraper in the city. The ribbon cutting is later today.

Steve slowly lowers his hands, unsure what his next step is. “Do you want to eat something? Or want water?”

Bucky does not answer, so Steve decides to move into the kitchen, intending on filling a glass to offer him. It is a mistake.

Bucky darts back into the bedroom, a quick retreat. It startles Steve, flight instead of fight surprising him. There is a scuffling noise from the room, as though Bucky has bumped something in his haste. Steve stands still beside the couch, unsure how to proceed.

After a few moments without Bucky’s return, Steve feels he has no choice but to follow. He drags his feet as he approaches the doorway, signaling his arrival. In the doorway, Steve stops and glances around. Has Bucky somehow left?

But then he sees him, in the same corner of the room beside the window where he had moved the armchair to escape earlier. He is behind it now, huddled with one shoulder against drywall and one against glass. Bucky is folded in on himself, the metal arm tucked between his torso and his legs pulled tight to his body. His hair hangs in his face, a dark curtain, but Steve can see some of his expression; tight with fear, the tendons in his neck standing out with tension.

“Buck, it’s just me,” Steve tells him. He is confused; why had Bucky trusted him somewhat earlier but did not seem to now?

Bucky’s eyes flash to him, unblinking. There is a soft scrape as Bucky pulls his legs even closer to himself, feet rubbing on the wood floors.

Steve approaches, rounding the end of the bed. When he gets too close—a distance determined by Bucky’s response—Bucky back pedals, pushing himself further into the tight corner. Steve stops, perplexed.

“Bucky,” he says, “You know me.”

“I don’t.” The two muttered words nearly break Steve. He struggles to school his emotions, a tortured expression screwing up his features momentarily. Bucky continues. “I know..” Bucky says, trailing off. His eyes scour Steve’s face for a moment before glancing away. “But it’s not-“

Steve waits for the rest of the sentence but it never comes. Instead, they wait in silence, the sound of the TV barely drifting into the room. Eventually, Steve lowers himself to the ground, crossing his legs with some difficulty and leaning against the corner of the foot of the bed.

Bucky watches apprehensively, taking in every movement Steve makes, cataloguing. Once again, Steve is reminded of a terrified animal.

Once Steve is settled, they stay like that. Bucky’s eyes are fixed on Steve who studies almost anything else but the man before him. He wants to let Bucky acclimate himself, and he feels that scrutinizing him back will only make Bucky uncomfortable. Steve feels anxious not knowing what Bucky is exactly doing, the fact that he could simply decide to launch himself across the room a constant reminder in the back of Steve’s mind. He breathes through the fear, telling himself he must do this to help Bucky, that it is necessary. He will do anything for Bucky.

After a time of playing with a loose thread near the cuff of his pants, Steve risks a glance. To his surprise, Bucky is no longer looking at him, but has his face turned towards the window. His eyes are closed, a ray of sunshine hitting him. Steve is astounded for a moment, but then recognizes the tension still in his shoulders; he may look deceivingly relaxed, but he is still attentive with every fiber of his being other than his eyes.

Steve shifts his weight, leaning more against the bed. He is still exhausted, the short five hours of sleep not enough after such an eventful day. Bucky’s eyes pop open at the noise, and he tenses even more. He watches as Steve uncrosses his legs and stretches them out, toes to the ceiling. Then he crosses his arms and leans his head against the bed.

Bucky looks back towards the window once he realizes that Steve isn’t trying to move any closer. A bird flies by the tower and Bucky tracks its progress across the sky.

The next thing Steve knows, he is waking up to the noise of someone hurrying past him. His eyes flash open, confused for just a moment about where he is. Steve is able to recall just as the bathroom door is quickly shut. Steve checks the corner and, sure enough, Bucky is gone. He must have been waiting, hoping Steve would wake and move to leave a clear path. He had not however and Bucky had been forced to brave the proximity.

Steve distantly hears the toilet flush and then the sink run. Idly, Steve recognizes that this is good, because if Bucky needed to pee that means he is actually possibly hydrated again. The door clicks open then, and Steve slowly turns his head to see Bucky peeking out. They lock eyes and Steve gets to his feet, making a show of vacating the room. He hopes that in his absence, Bucky will pick somewhere more comfortable, like one of the armchairs or the bed, to situate himself. Upon his return to the room though, Bucky is in the corner again.

 

Days continue like this. Steve spends the majority of his time quietly sitting on the 39 th floor. After the second day like this, Steve begins bringing books along with him. He is thankful that New York has such a large public library, as it gives him plenty to choose from.

Steve spends some of this time attempting to get Bucky to eat. He cooks food in the Avenger’s kitchen, not wanting to bother Bucky with the noise and haste of it. He isn’t a good cook by any means—most would probably consider him bad—but he brings eggs and toast down with him in the mornings. Steve realizes quickly that getting Bucky to eat is going to be a challenge. Even being soft with him, gently asking if he is hungry, does not yield a response. Steve is at a loss.

Bucky does little to nothing during the day. It is a pattern of picking somewhere to curl in on himself and warily watching Steve. The blonde man wonders if his absence would be more beneficial but he does not want to leave Bucky alone after so long alone following D.C. Or at least he can assume Bucky was alone considering the state he was in. Human contact, on any level, seems the better option.

The others inquire about Bucky every time Steve returns to the upper floors. He never has much to report. They spend many nights discussing different things to offer him to eat, taking turns cooking things or asking Tony’s housekeepers to make dishes none of them consider themselves capable of, but nothing does the trick. Steve even tracked down a recipe Bucky’s mother used to make, a ham soup. He found it online, one that seemed similar enough to what he remembered, but Bucky just stared at it while Steve asked, from across the room, if he wanted to try it.

On the bright side, Bucky at least will drink water. He accepts this from Steve wordlessly. He had found on the night of the first day that Bucky would not accept a glass handed to him but did take and drink from it when Steve left it on the table. Now, Steve always brings a bottle of water with him and rolls it across the floor to Bucky once they’ve settled in for the day.

The routine of it, with Bucky hunkered in some corner, worries Steve. He doesn’t act like a person. He barely talks, doesn’t eat, and doesn’t interact with anything on more than a basic level. He finds himself wondering how much humanity Bucky has left, but shakes his head to rid himself of the oddly intrusive thought. Bucky will be back, Bucky will be himself again. He has to be.

Bucky does begin to speak more often. He asks small, confusing questions. Sometimes, after hours of silence he will simply ask, “Why?” Steve always tries to coax an elaboration from him but to no avail. The question goes unanswered. Once or twice, Bucky has asked for more water. One time, he asked for a sweatshirt. Steve has been bringing clean outfits for him, Steve’s own clothes neatly folded and left on the bed for Bucky. He must change into them early in the morning before Steve comes down because he is always adorned in what Steve left the previous day. The day he asked for a sweatshirt was when Steve had left just a gray t-shirt for him. After that, he makes sure the shirts he brings always have long sleeves.

Fury calls eventually, wondering why Steve and Natasha have put their training of the new Avengers on hold. Steve tells him that a break was in order, seven days a week pounding strategy and logistics into them seemed too rigorous. He offers to let Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey come to the tower when they wish to continue their training. He pretends that a change of scenery and the bustle of the city will be nice. He feels guilty for abandoning them, especially Wanda and Vision who are so new to this world of fighting and strategy. Steve must find a way to balance both of his responsibilities.

Fury tells him they need to be back at training before the month is out and to extend the invitation himself. “Cap, they need you to guide them. You’re the leader of this team. Let them know what’s going on.” The click of the call ending is immediate.

Steve trains at night, after dinner. The gym is one level below Bucky. He beats the punching bags with frustration, bursting three or four each time. Natasha joins him sometimes and they spar, soaking their workout gear with sweat and salting the mats. Sam watches sometimes, always in awe of Steve’s strength and her agility. They are pretty equal matches as they excel where the other lacks slightly.

 

It has almost been one week since their visit to Sokovia when—finally—Bucky eats. Steve is shocked, the basic oatmeal with slices of banana he had brought with him being the most unexpected item to entice him. After downing two spoonfuls, Bucky self-consciously stops and meets Steve’s astounded gaze.

Bucky slowly blinks, then answers the unspoken question. “It’s safe now,” he says. Steve doesn’t know what that means. He has learned though that questions get him no answers, so he simply lives with the confusion.

When Steve returns upstairs around noon to make his own lunch, he makes a second sandwich for Bucky. Natasha is in the living room on her laptop, scouring SHIELD files as they continue to locate Hydra bases and destroy them. At least one of them is continuing some of the work for SHIELD.

Without looking up from the screen, she addresses Steve. “One,” she tells him, “the newbies are coming to join us starting Friday.” That is two days to create a cover story for Steve’s whereabouts ninety percent of the time. “Two,” she continues, “who is the second sandwich for?”

Steve knows she is hoping it will be for her. Natasha is known to get immersed into her work and forgo much else. She is hoping to not have to tear herself away from the computer in order to have lunch. “You’re out of luck, Bucky’s eating,” he tells her.

Natasha takes a moment to process the answer, only half focused on the conversation. When she does, her reaction is almost comical. “Wait what? No way!”

“He ate the oatmeal I made this morning,” Steve tells her, unable to hide the smile breaking across his face.

“Friday, tell Tony and Sam,” Natasha instructs.

“Of course Ms. Romanoff,” Friday responds.

“They’re going to be psyched!”

“Does that mean excited?”

“Quit playing up the old man act, I’ve used that around you before.”

 

“Okay, so Cap is busy scouring old maps to find Hydra bases? In an office downstairs?” Tony asks. He is in his lab, in the loft space above, fiddling with something that looks like a new Iron Man gauntlet. The other three of them are sitting on the sofas around the huge square coffee table in the party space. “But if he is in the building, will they try and go bother him at all?”

“That’s why we say he is doing the work at the library. They have tons of old blueprints and maps we can pretend he is looking over,” Natasha tells him.

“And what if this gets back to Fury?” Sam asks.

“Then I look at some maps and actually do figure out where Hydra bases might have been back in the day,” Steve tells Sam. “I think we’ll be fine.”

“Are we sure we want to lie to them?” Sam asks.

“I mean, I don’t know how you expect me not to slip up around Rhodey,” Tony calls. 

“Tony, we need you to help us keep Bucky a secret for now,” Steve tells him. “Until he is stable, we can’t have anyone wander down there or try to find him. I had thought we could let the team know but I just don’t think it’s a good idea anymore.”

“Okay, okay, but Rhodey is my best friend you know.”

 

It is the impending arrival of the new Avengers that pushes Steve to make a decision; someone else needs to be able to enter the 39 th floor. What if he does end up needing to do work for SHIELD? What if one of the recruits needs him? If something should come up, Bucky needs to be familiar enough with another member of the team that they can simply check on him and deliver a plate of food.

“Nat, can I talk to you?” Steve asks. He is standing in the kitchen as Natasha sits with her legs folded under her on the sofa, watching a documentary about prisoners that foster shelter dogs. She had found it on Netflix.

“Of course,” she chirps, springing to her feet. “Who do you need killed?”

“I need you to befriend Bucky,” Steve tells her. “So quite the opposite.”

Steve explains why he thinks it necessary and she agrees. “Just let me have some spider bites on me,” Natasha tells him. Her voice is half serious, half joking and Steve knows they will be clipped on her belt.

“Bucky just needs to not attack you if you bring him a meal,” Steve says, like he is trying to convince himself too. “That’s all. That’s doable, right?”

“Don’t see why not,” Nat says. “When do I get to formally meet the boyfriend?”

“He’s not-“

“I’m teasing Steve.”

“… I know.”

They decide that Natasha will accompany Steve down the next morning. He will introduce her and if everything goes to plan, Bucky might even take to her. Natasha knows Bucky speaks Russian as they heard it on the streets of D.C. Perhaps the language along with their shared KGB training will bond the two. Steve can only hope.

As Steve lays in bed that night, he begins to worry. How much forewarning does Bucky need? Should he tell him now? That way he can mentally prepare overnight to meet someone new? Steve stares at the ceiling for an hour. He had hoped to fall asleep by eleven, to get some extra hours under his belt. He has been having bad dreams lately, waking himself in the wee hours of the morning, but unable to remember what they were about. It is beyond frustrating.

Eventually, Steve decides to see if Bucky is awake. Based on the circles under his eyes, Bucky doesn’t sleep much, so Steve figures there is a chance he is still up. He swings his feet off the bed and pads to the elevator. 

On the 39 th floor, the lights are off and all seems still. Bucky is not in the living room but the bedroom door is half open and some light spills out. Steve thinks he may be awake and approaches the door. Without swinging it open any further, Steve manages to slide his broad shoulders sideways through and peak into the room.

The bedside lamp is on but Bucky is not in bed, nor in either armchair. Steve is about to panic when he sees a lumpy figure on the floor. The comforter that Steve had removed from the bed over a week ago is burritoed around Bucky, who lays in the corner between the wall and the floor length windows. He is dead asleep, small breaths barely audible to Steve from the doorway. Steve is taken aback by the sleeping arrangement. Why isn’t Bucky using the bed?

Then he remembers the first conversation he had partaken in with Sam months and months ago now. Sometimes, the bed is just too soft.

Steve has poured over Bucky’s file hundreds of times, read the fine print of the details SHIELD knew about Bucky’s treatment under Hydra. He knows that Bucky has not slept naturally in years, that he was put into cryo sleep upon his return to his handlers after every mission.

Steve takes in the details again of Bucky’s sleep. The way the comforter is wrapped tightly around Bucky’s body, his hands clasped in the material and pulling it all the way to his chin. At the bottom, his toes are barely visible, but Steve sees that he is wearing socks to bed. Suddenly, something clicks in Steve’s brain: the cryo, the request for a sweatshirt, the comforter.

When Steve returns to the elevator, he speaks to Friday. “Can you keep that floor a little warmer from now on?”

“Of course Steve,” she replies.

 

The next morning, Steve arrives without Natasha; She will be summoned by Friday after Steve explains to Bucky what will be happening.

Bucky is in a corner of the living room when the elevator doors open, looking up expectantly but with no excitement. To Steve, it seems like Bucky knows it will be him but doesn’t have feelings about if he  _ wants  _ Steve’s presence.

Steve heads to the kitchen where he sets down the plate of pancakes Sam had made this morning (they had all eaten pancakes this morning courtesy of Sam) and then fills a glass with the carton of orange juice from the fridge on this floor.

Bucky slowly makes his way over. He is still skittish, nervous when his back is not to solid walls. But he seats himself at the kitchen island and grabs the fork Steve sets beside the plate. As he takes the first bite, Steve breaks the silence.

“Bucky, one of my friends is going to visit today.”

Bucky’s fork stops halfway to his mouth. “Why—Who?” He sounds broken, confused.

“Natasha. You might remember her from…D.C.” Steve isn’t sure if it was good to mention the previous encounter or not.

“The Widow,” Bucky says with a note of apprehension.

“She’s Black Widow but she’s going to be your friend,” Steve tells him. How does he convey that someone Bucky has shot on two separate occasions wants to be his friend?

“She is dangerous,” Bucky tells Steve. He states it like he is repeating others’ words.

“She can be, but not to you,” Steve says. This conversation is not going how he imagined.

Bucky stops responding, focused on eating the pancakes. Steve worries about how much Bucky is eating, knowing how much he eats himself because of his super soldier metabolism. Bucky usually only eats two meals a day, ignoring one of the plates Steve brings down with him. Steve can’t tell if he has regained any weight yet.

Steve wanders to the living room while Bucky eats and he hears the stool creak as Bucky readjusts to track his movements around the room. Steve simply plops onto the sofa, taking out his phone to check his email. He only has one because SHIELD had insisted upon it for sending him information. It only gets a few emails a day, updates from SHIELD about procedural changes or notices. Anything more important is told directly to them, either before the mission it pertains to or over the phone. Fury and Hill make a lot of phone calls.

When Bucky finishes, Steve tells him that Natasha is going to visit now. Friday is listening (she always is unless asked not to) and automatically lets Natasha know, as they had asked of her earlier this morning. The sound of the elevator whirring to life can be heard through the wall and Bucky looks at the elevator doors, eyes wide.

“It’s fine Bucky, she’s friendly,” Steve tells him. Bucky must have the time it takes for the elevator to arrive from the Avenger’s floor to here memorized because seconds before it opens, he darts from the stool in the kitchen to a corner of the living room, the furthest one from the elevator doors. He doesn’t curl up, hunkering down, but stands with his back safe against the solid walls, weight on his toes.

When the doors actually do open, Bucky stiffens. Natasha walks out, her pace measured like Steve had told her to do. This morning, they had a crash course on how to not startle Bucky.

“Bucky, Natasha. Natasha, Bucky. I mean, you guys have seen each other before but this is a friendly setting,” Steve says, hoping the humor helps the situation.

“I am very good at sitting in silence and delivering meals,” Natasha tells Bucky.

The humor is lost on him as his eyes continuously widen with fear. Steve sees it, recognizes that Bucky is trying to hide it too. There is an internal struggle as Bucky tries to stay standing but fights the urge to curl in on himself.

“Buck, there’s no danger here,” Steve tells him. It hurts, watching him fight his own flight or fight response. Steve wishes he could simply stride forwards and wrap Bucky in his arms, but it is out of the question.

Suddenly, Bucky moves. He darts into the kitchen and places himself behind the kitchen island. Steve turns, watching him but Steve moving seems to make Bucky move more until it clicks; Bucky is using Steve as a shield and putting him between himself and Natasha.

Steve stills and so does Bucky. There is a tense moment in which no one knows what to do.

“Bucky, calm down,” Steve tells him.

“I’m a friend,” Natasha says from behind Steve. He can’t see her, but assumes that she took a step to the side, into Bucky’s view, as she spoke because suddenly Bucky is pulling open the silverware drawer, cutlery rattling, and a fork is whipped across the room.

It whistles past Steve’s head, missing him by inches; Steve was not the intended target. He turns in time to see Natasha duck, the fork burying itself into the drywall behind her, the spokes leaving four little holes.

When Steve turns back around to look at Bucky, he is gone. The bedroom door is half shut behind him. There is silence on the floor.

Steve turns back to Natasha and runs a hand over his face. “Well, it’s not the worst that could have gone.”

“Are their knives in that drawer?” she asks.

“Butter knives,” Steve tells her.

“Definitely could have been worse,” she agrees with a shrug.

They leave Bucky alone for the next few hours, Steve unsure if his presence will be helpful or only worsen whatever Bucky is experiencing. Obviously, others can’t be on the floor yet, even if they come with Steve’s blessing.

“Friday, can you make the thirty ninth floor off limits to anyone but me?” Steve asks the AI.

“Such a command must be run past Mr. Stark but I feel confident that he will agree.”

Steve waits a moment and then Friday speaks again. “Mr. Stark agrees. You are now the only one who may access the thirty ninth floor.”

Steve breathes a sigh of relief.

Around one, Steve returns to Bucky. He is surprised but happy to see that he is not still in the bedroom, but sitting on the floor with his back to the sofa. It’s a spot Steve has never seen him before.

“It’s just me this time,” Steve tells him, clearing the air of any fear of a repeat. “No one else will try to visit you.” Steve sets the leftover pasta, microwaved upstairs before his descent, on the coffee table and retreats to the kitchen where he sits on one of the stools. If Bucky is that close to the couch, Steve won’t be able to sit there without invading Bucky’s personal space.

Steve is doing the crossword puzzle from The New York Times, a challenge to anyone let alone someone who slept for seventy years. He is trying to solve a small riddle about Robert De Niro when he realizes the absence of the sound of chewing. Steve glances over and sure enough, the plate is untouched, the fork sitting on the table beside it. This happens often though, where Bucky skips a meal, so he shrugs and goes back to the frustrating crossword.

Steve leaves the room to have his dinner on the Avengers common floor with a promise to Bucky that he will be back in a bit. There is no response from the man still sitting at the foot of the sofa.

True to his word, Steve comes down later with grilled chicken and rice. With Bucky’s lack of nutrition leading up to finding him in Sokovia, Steve has been careful to feed him things that aren’t too hard on the stomach. He’s not sure what Bucky can handle. Under Hydra’s control, he had not even been provided with real food. Before and after cryo, he would simply be given what could only be described as slop (Steve thinks of it as some sort of demonic oatmeal) that gave the super soldier enough fuel to complete a mission. Truth be told, Steve was impressed Bucky could still stomach real food at all. Perhaps it was a testament to the effects of the serum.

This time, Bucky is on the floor near the bedroom door, another spot Steve has never seen him occupy. He says a hello and sets the plate of food in the kitchen, within sight of Bucky. The apartment has very few walls, so Bucky can keep an eye on Steve unless he was to enter the bedroom. Otherwise, it’s a simple open floor plan.

Steve has a book this time,  _ 1984 _ by George Orwell, and settles onto the couch to read. After two pages and utter silence from the rest of the room, he looks back up. Bucky is still on the floor, back against the wall and knees pulled up to his chin. Steve notices, like he has several other times, that Bucky’s metal arm is tucked between his legs and torso, hiding the majority of it from view.

“Bucky, are you going to eat?”

Bucky’s head turns slowly towards Steve, an acknowledgement of his voice but no response to the words. Steve will take what he can get.

He waits, but Bucky does not move. Maybe he’s just not hungry yet, so Steve returns to his book. He doesn’t remember reading it before the war, but apparently it is one of the most popular books to come out of his time. Tony even said they make kids read it in school, but Steve can’t imagine why; the content is gruesome.

An hour passes and Steve isn’t really reading. He is resisting the urge to watch Bucky and wonder why the hell he hasn’t eaten his dinner yet. Steve feels like he is physically fighting his eyes from glancing towards the bedroom door, to the still figure beside it. The balance of spending time with Bucky but not actually acknowledging his best friend’s behavior is becoming more difficult.

Eventually, he can’t stand himself anymore. “I promise it’s good,” Steve tells Bucky. He risks a glance over as he speaks, but Bucky doesn’t notice. He is staring at the far wall, where there is another floor to ceiling window like the one in the bedroom. “It might be cold by now though.”

As Steve tacks on the second sentence, Bucky pushes himself off the floor and slowly walks into the bedroom, clicking the door shut behind him. Steve listens intently, staring at the closed door, but no sounds carry from within.

It seems they are back at square one.


	2. Bear My Skin and Count My Sins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One step forward, two steps back
> 
> Chapter title from "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay but if you aren't okay with vomit really don't read this one. If you have ANY questions about your specific triggers don't hesitate to contact me on tumblr (freshstuckytrash) and ask! This chapter ended up darker than I had anticipated so enjoy?? I guess??
> 
> Also, if you are someone who likes to listen to music as you read, begin listening to "Axe Gang" from the Snowpiercer soundtrack when a new scene starts with "It was Tuesday night"

Bucky gasps. “Is part of his tail gone?” he asks. Steve stiffens on the other end of the sofa, not realizing until that moment the similarity between Toothless’s missing tail and Bucky’s own arm. They’ve been watching movies together, now that Bucky is becoming aware of the world around him and—by extension—comfortable enough to interact with it. Steve had been shocked the first time he came down to the Hulk floor to find Bucky seated at the end of the sofa and not on the floor, but now it was routine. Only a few days had passed since the change in Bucky mentally but they had begun participating in short, stilted conversations usually fueled by one of Bucky’s inquiries.

Steve doesn’t know how to answer this question though, unsure if the handicap of the dragon is going to be something of a trigger for Bucky. A glance to the other end of the sofa shows Steve that Bucky is sitting with his body tucked tightly as usual, metal arm between his torso and legs as they are drawn tight to his chest. He seems okay, just his usual attempts to comfort himself and seem ever smaller.

Eventually, Steve tells him “Yeah, it is. But don’t worry.” He keeps his eyes on Bucky for a few moments before returning them to the screen, making sure Bucky isn’t having a negative reaction.

Steve has been visiting the Redbox two blocks down religiously each morning. With the reappearance of his morning jogs—a habit he had put on hold following the destruction of Sokovia in lieu of training the newbies—he passes it every day. Mostly, he rents lighthearted movies to watch with Bucky. So far, it has been _Up, Open Season,_ and now _How to Train Your Dragon_.

In the end, Toothless turns out to be Bucky’s favorite character. He does not comment immensely on the movies, just watches them with a somewhat blank face. Steve isn’t even usually sure if he is actually _watching_ the movies or if his eyes just happen to be aimed towards the television but he catches the light in Bucky’s eyes when Hiccup and Toothless go for their first flight with the prosthetic. Perhaps the Pixar movie was a good choice after all.

Not everything is perfect though; Bucky hasn’t eaten in five days and Steve is at the end of his rope. The self restraint he must exercise when visiting Bucky, not letting himself become too worked up over his silent refusals to consume food, leaves him ready to explode whenever Steve returns to the Avengers commonfloor.

“Sam I don’t know what to do,” Steve says, voice full of anguish. He is seated across the living room of Steve’s apartment from Sam while the ex paratrooper ices an ankle he twisted during training. The rest of the new recruits arrived yesterday, throwing Steve, Sam, and Natasha’s days into stressful, split time between their professional responsibilities and also the responsibility of Bucky. “I don’t know how soon he will starve because of the serum and we can’t… we can’t find out the hard way.”

“Okay, let’s go over everything again,” Sam tells him. “He’s responding to you, right? Talking?”

“Yes, but…it’s more than before but not…normal by any means.” Steve leaves off the part where he wants to say that it’s not _his_ Bucky.

“And you said that he responds to direct orders?” Sam asks.

“I’ve only seen it once, the first time he woke up and he was trying to run. I told him to get off the armchair.”

“And have you ‘ordered’ him to eat?” Sam asks, enunciating the word “order” by making quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

“No, I haven’t told him to do anything since then.” Steve shudders when thinking about how Bucky had not even seemed to be aware of his own actions, had put his brain on autopilot and simply obeyed the command. Steve doesn’t know how he feels about what Sam is implying.

“I think it’s worth a shot to just tell him to eat,” Sam says. “Nothing too harsh,” he clarifies when he catches the look of uncertainty on Steve’s features, “Just no questions in how you say it.”

Steve mulls it over. It makes his stomach churn, giving Bucky no choice. Undoubtedly, Bucky’s handlers had been terrible, cruel people. Lucky for them, SHIELD never had learned their names, or Steve would be tracking them to the ends of the earth. Stepping into their shoes, taking on that role in Bucky’s life—even if just for a moment—unnerves Steve to the bone.

“I’ll…I’ll try it,” Steve answers after mulling it over. “I’ll bring him something good for dinner tonight.”

Sam nods, eyes back on the TV.

True to his word, Steve arrives on the 39th floor around six with a bowl of homemade ham soup, another try at Mrs. Barnes’s recipe. Bucky is curled up on one end of the sofa, the TV on but muted. This is a regular activity now too, the sound only present when Steve is here watching too. Steve isn’t sure if Bucky likes silence or just doesn’t like the sounds of the TV itself.

“I brought you soup,” Steve tells Bucky. Blue eyes glance towards him as he approaches, then back to the TV. Steve gently sets the bowl on the coffee table before occupying his usual spot on the opposite couch cushion.

Bucky makes no move towards the bowl, leaving it to send coils of steam up to the ceiling. While his eyes remain focused on the broadcast, Steve stares at the soup. A tiny part of him hopes Bucky is just being sensible and waiting for it to cool, but he knows that won’t be the case.

The steam slowly changes from a ghostly sheen between Steve and the TV to just tiny wisps directly above the broth and Steve must bite the bullet.

“Buck-“

The tiny “no” that escapes Bucky’s lips makes Steve gag on his next words. Bucky knew what he was going to ask of him, and adamantly does _not_ want to eat. Steve focuses on making his chest expand, taking a few deep breaths, before he can look at Bucky.

He is still nestled against the opposite arm rest, looking at Steve. Even if he is normally folded in on himself, shoulders hunched, he seems even more so now. His legs are pulled so tightly against himself that Bucky could have rested his chin on his knees, the tips of his hair brushing his pant legs. Steve feels his heart break as he locks gazes with Bucky, his eyes seeming to plead with him.

“Bucky,” Steve says, and suddenly he is the one pleading. “You’re starving! Why are you doing this?” Tears prick at the corners of his eyes and Steve blinks them back. Bucky does not respond to his words. “Buck.” Steve’s utterance of the name hitches as his throat constricts.

Bucky takes the pause as a moment to tense and Steve can see his eyes flick to the bedroom door, planning to flee.

“Bucky, eat the soup,” Steve tells him, before Bucky gets the chance. He has to rein in his own instinct to blanch, every fiber of his own being disgusted with what he has just done.

Bucky’s eyes are wide as he looks at the soup, eyeing the spoon Steve had set beside the bowl. He slowly moves down the sofa so that the bowl is within reach, coming the closest he has to Steve since they grappled over the lamp in the bedroom. Steve almost retracts the command, tells him no and snatches the soup away, as Bucky picks up the spoon, singularly focused on what he has been told, and dips it into the broth before bringing it to his lips.

Steve watches in horror at himself and what Hydra has done as Bucky obediently downs the soup, hunched over the coffee table. It’s a scene so atrocious Steve can’t seem to look away.

The bowl isn’t even half empty when Bucky hesitates, a look of nausea flashing across his features and Steve instructs his horror-frozen body to life. “It’s okay Bucky,” Steve tells him, a hand flashing forwards, as if to pull the soup away from him, but thinks better of it.

The confirmation that he can stop seems to be the breaking point for Bucky, who pushes off the sofa and sprints to the bedroom. The door is flung open behind him, swinging on the hinges, the nasty scarring from the lamp’s assault to the wood staring Steve in the face.

Not sure whether to pursue Bucky or not, Steve stands and hovers somewhere between the couch and the doorway. His feet are knocked into movement however by the sound of Bucky violently emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet in the en suite bathroom.

Steve is by his side in seconds, sliding to the floor beside the toilet to hold back Bucky’s hair and stroke his back, touches he has been withholding now unfiltered as his instinct to care for Bucky kicks in. The wiry muscles beneath Steve’s hand strain as Bucky’s body heaves and empties more bile into the toilet bowl. The sound unsettles Steve’s own stomach and he forces himself to take several deep breaths, fighting down his own revulsion. Bucky continues to heave, his body still convulsing despite expelling the meal from itself long ago. Steve can only standby, hands comforting, as he waits.

When Bucky is finally done, he slumps, muscles relaxing at long last, and rests the side of his face on the toilet seat. Steve cringes—it’s not the most sanitary action—but the cool porcelain must feel good against Bucky’s clammy skin.

Steve carefully removes his hands from Bucky’s back, unsure if he even realized that he was being touched. Bucky still doesn’t react, so Steve does not think so. They sit in silence for several moments longer before Steve stands up, swiftly moving to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen and a damp towel before returning. Bucky still does not take things directly from Steve, so he sets them carefully beside Bucky’s leg before retreating a few feet and settling cross legged on the ground. Bucky takes the cloth first, questioning eyes flicking to Steve who motions towards his face. Bucky wipes the perspiration from his brow and then his mouth before setting that down and picking up the water. Before he drinks from it, he scoots away from the toilet, putting his back to a wall.

It is silent besides Bucky’s still labored breathing as they occupy the bathroom. There is no other word for it really, as there is no connotation to their presence. They are simply there as Bucky recovers from the vomiting bought.

“I’m sorry,” Steve eventually whispers. It has been long enough for Bucky to gather himself, so he assumes speaking won’t startle him. The apology has been struggling from behind his lips for some time now, and he can no longer contain it.

Bucky does not respond, not that Steve had expected him to, and simply takes another sip from the water glass. There is another moment of silence before Bucky surprisingly speaks.

“They always laced it,” he tells Steve. His tone sounds absentminded, but there is so much more to the sudden explanation he is providing.

“They laced what?” Steve asks, trying to sound gentle, but inside his heart is racing. What had they done? Who is _they_?

“My food. After failure to comply. Always seven days.” Each stilted sentence comes with a lengthy pause, but it is the most Steve has heard Bucky speak in more than seventy years. Steve’s heart plummets after each statement.

“Hydra?” Steve asks, coaxing more from between Bucky’s tight lips.

The Russian surprises Steve. “Комите́т госуда́рственной безопа́сности.”

KGB. Everything suddenly clicks. The way Bucky had only eaten after a week had passed, simply proclaiming that something was safe after the time frame ended, how he now rejected the food after attacking Nat, and now the additional information of the KGB. Steve understood now; they had trained Bucky into a complete success by teaching him that failure was not an option. The tactics then were undoubtedly different than when Natasha had been through the academy, and it seems that during the 40’s, the idea had been to punish via turning a vital need against Bucky: food.

Steve forces himself to take a deep breath; to not throw up or punch the wall or cry or panic as he so desperately wants to. “You’re food isn’t laced,” Steve tells him, trying to keep the cocktail of emotions he feels inside from leaking into his voice. “It’s safe, I would never—“ he cuts himself off, unable to voice the cruel acts he has just become aware of.

“I know,” Bucky says, and the relief hits Steve like a tsunami wave at the shore. Bucky _does_ know that no harm will become him here. “But I can’t.”

Steve isn’t sure he knows what Bucky means by that. Is he now punishing himself? “Buck, you can eat. It’s okay. You need the food.”

“I can’t,” he repeats meekly after a moment. Bucky seems to be losing energy quickly, eyes wilting and voice becoming thicker. “It won’t…” Bucky trails off and motions weakly to his body.

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, more for himself than Bucky. He is talking himself into letting Bucky be, to stop his pursuit of more information. “Let’s get you to the bed,” he tells Bucky instead. Steve stands, unsure if he will need to help Bucky or not after the puking episode, and if Bucky will let him.

Bucky stands, knees wobbling slightly. He mimics Steve as he leads the way into the bedroom and then shuffles to the bed when Steve motions to it. It is the most Steve has ever been able to have Bucky comply to without giving him an order, something Steve vows never to do again, considering the ramifications.

“I’m sorry Buck,” Steve whispers to the room as he watches Bucky move about on the mattress, attempting to get comfortable. He guiltily looks at Steve before leaving the bed and moving to the floor, where the comforter lays.

“That’s fine,” Steve assures him, wondering if Bucky will ever sleep on a bed again. He watches as Bucky tucks himself amongst the comforter like the contents of a burrito. “I’ll be back later if you need anything,” Steve tells him, knowing Bucky will resist sleep if he stays.

The comforter rustles as Bucky nods and Steve doesn’t think he remembers receiving recognition of his words like that before. Somehow, the major setback Bucky just experienced also seems to have been a step forward. Unsure if he wants to think about what that means, Steve hurries himself to the elevator.

Friday must have brought it to the floor, knowing Steve would be departing shortly, because it is waiting for him. He makes it up the two floors to his own, through the hallway, and into his own apartment before he breaks down.

Steve ends up sliding down the wall only several feet from the door, wracking breaths tearing from his lungs. The silence is broken by the sharp intakes as hot tears begin to weave trails down his cheeks. Steve can’t remember a time that breathing has felt this hard since Erskine’s serum.

With his head in his hands, Steve’s heart jackhammers. Bucky had been tortured, Bucky had been starved, while he slept in the ice. His Bucky had _died_ by malnutrition and been replaced by the sterile Winter Soldier. That was how they’d broken him, and they still had his mind in their grasp. They still were ruining his life, making him starve, causing harm to him and there was nothing Steve could do. He could not help, he could not change what had happened to Bucky, and could not change it now. It was hardwired in, an instinct deeply ingrained from years of mistreatment, of torture. And now Steve couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—

The door clicking open is so quiet that Steve almost doesn’t hear it. It registers somewhere past the panic of his mind, and suddenly someone is gripping the sides of his face, asking him to look at them.

Natasha swims into view, red hair more discernable than any other feature. “Steve, breathe, deep breaths,” she tells him. His head is heavy in her hands, the strength he usually holds lost from him. “Breathe Cap, time it to mine.”

The instructions are lost on him, the ability to regulate his jagged intakes of breath purely by focus far beyond his current capabilities. Natasha is forced to take his hands, pry them from where they white-knuckle grip his jeans, and place them on her own chest. “Steve, breathe with me.”

As Natasha takes purposefully deep breaths, Steve begins to truly register her presence. Muscles shaking, he begins to inhale and exhale slower, attempting to time it to hers. “Nat,” he gasps.

“I’m here Steve, inhale again,” she instructs, a gentle smile on her lips.  He does, chest expanding with Natasha’s and then exhaling again. “There ya go,” she tells him.

They continue to breathe together for several minutes, the room silent save for the sound of the air passing their lips. Once Steve has calmed, he seems to lose every bit of strength from his body, leaning more heavily against the wall. Natasha moves from in front of Steve to beside him, curling against his side and gently rubbing his arm.

After a long time passes, Steve murmurs to Natasha a quiet thank you. She squeezes his arm in response. Another minute passes and then Natasha stands up. “Come on big guy,” she coaxes, holding her hands out to lever him to his feet. “At least make it to the couch.”

Steve takes her hands, but stands up on his own, not actually relying on her as he doesn’t know if he would pull Nat over should he really let her bear his weight. She leads him to the sofa in the small sitting room, plopping herself on one end and crossing her legs before patting her thigh.

They’ve snuggled often enough that Steve knows she expects him to pillow his head on her thigh and he obliges, stretching his legs down the rest of the couch. She immediately begins carding her fingers through his hair, an action that relaxes him beyond all else.

“Sleep,” she tells him, an instruction. “We will talk about it later.”

Steve wants to resist, argue that it is unnecessary, but now that he is lying on the sofa, he notices the exhaustion in him from the panic attack and can’t think of anything that sounds better.

When Steve wakes, it feels like a lifetime later rather than two hours. Natasha is still on the sofa with him, the TV remote balanced on her other leg. The television is on, but muted, subtitles running across the bottom of the screen as she watches reruns of some police drama.

Steve stays still for a moment, but Natasha of course already knows he is awake. “Nice nap?” she asks nonchalantly, almost as if Steve had simply fallen asleep while they watched the program.

Instead of responding, he slowly sits up, rubbing his eyes fiercely like a small child. Natasha doesn’t mind his lack of vocalization and instead picks herself up off the sofa and heads to his small apartment kitchen. Steve momentarily wonders what she is up to as the sound of her opening a cabinet reaches his ears. Then she returns with a glass of water, handing it to Steve and plopping back onto the couch beside him. Steve gratefully drinks the water, his throat incredibly dry. He knows he snores on occasion, and wonders if he did so just now. He hopes not.

When the show goes to commercial, Steve breaks the silence. “How did you know?” he asks.

“Friday called me,” Natasha answers simply and Steve realizes that he should have assumed the AI would have alerted Nat.

“I owe that AI a lot,” Steve murmurs as he raises the glass of water to his lips. Post-sip, he adds “I owe you too.”

Natasha gently reaches over and wraps her arms around Steve’s middle. “No you don’t Rogers,” she tells him as he returns the embrace. “You never owe me anything.”

 

It is the promise of dinner that finally brings them from Steve’s apartment, Friday alerting them that Sam asked her to “get their asses to the kitchen”. They arrive just as Tony is descending the spiral stairs between the common floor and the party floor, coming from his lab. Moments after the elevator departs behind Natasha and Steve, it returns with Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey. Their apartments on the 40th floor had been rushed to finish, Tony hiring more workers, before their arrival several days ago. The tower now is as ideal a space for the team to train as SHIELD headquarters, and more ideal to anyone that knew Steve’s reasoning for relocating everyone.

“There is a casserole in the oven and I am not letting it get cold,” Sam tells them, skipping a greeting. “Steve, you are on drinks. Natasha, plates. Tony—never mind I know you won’t do what I ask. Wanda, side salads. Vis, silverware. Rhodes, I am out of tasks.”

They all set to their duties, assuring an organized meal. The casserole turns out to be delicious, a recipe Sam apparently has memorized. As per usual, they do not sit at the table. In fact, they _never_ sit around the large dining table, a much too formal setting for such a haphazard group, but instead drape themselves across seemingly every piece of furniture in the room. Steve is on the sofa, Tony beside him, while Vision is in an armchair to the side. Wanda and Natasha are on the barstools by the kitchen counter and Sam and Rhodey casually occupy one end of the giant oak table. It’s rather unlike any family Steve can imagine but he would not trade them for anything.

“Rogers, a word?” Tony asks as everyone begins to depart post meal. Natasha is taking the recruits down to the gym for some physical training and Steve was planning on heading to check on Bucky.

“If it’s only a minute,” Steve responds, glancing towards the elevator that will take him back to Bucky.

“You’ll be highly interested in this,” Tony tells him, a hopeful promise in his tone. Steve is immediately interested and follows Tony as he heads back up to his lab.

The door is securely shut behind them, Tony instructing Friday to alert them should anyone come to visit, and then he turns to Steve. “The arm,” Tony begins, “I have about ten escape plans lined up and if Quaid is talking again, now seems good.”

Steve does not understand whatever reference Tony is attempting to make. He is sidetracked however by the realization that Tony has been scouring the scans of Bucky’s arm all these hours in his lab and not improving the wine industry. Pepper will be proud. Despite that, Steve still has concerns on the subject. “Even if he agrees to you looking at it, I can’t guarantee he won’t panic,” Steve tells Tony. “You’re still at risk.”

“I’ve had higher risks,” Tony responds nonchalantly. “And I still have travel size EMP available.”

“I’ll talk to him tonight then,” Steve says. The idea of ensuring Bucky’s safety from the kill switches is disgustingly appealing to him, and if Tony is insisting that it should be sooner rather than later, Steve is not going to argue.

Bucky is still in the bedroom when Steve returns but awake, nestled in the blanket on the floor and watching the window. He does not turn when Steve enters the room but from the attentiveness of his posture, Steve knows he heard his entrance.

“Buck I promise I have no food with me,” Steve tells him, immediately clearing the air. “I’m just here to see you.”

Bucky turns, glancing over his shoulder to acknowledge Steve. When he meets Bucky’s eyes, Steve feels his mind regress, the earlier crisis attempting to replay in his brain. Steve shoves them down, stifles them like beating out a fire, and moves across the room to settle on the floor near Bucky. They sit in companionable silence for a bit, both watching the world outside the window. The view is across the city, no taller buildings obscuring the sight for several blocks. Looking down, there is one roof with a pool. No one is sitting by it today though, the slightly overcast weather not conducive to sunbathing.

“Bucky,” Steve begins, unsure what his next words will be. How do you tell someone that they have a killing device installed in their arm? Steve waits for Bucky to acknowledge that he is listening before continuing. “When Zola put the arm on you… they installed some fail safes.”

“I know,” Bucky whispers and Steve’s insides freeze.

“You…you knew they were there?” Steve is confused on why Bucky would know, and—on top of that—why he didn’t say something before now about them.

“I’ve been waiting,” Bucky tells Steve and his stomach sinks like a stone. Bucky _knew_ that Hydra had installed a way to kill him, to keep him from escape or becoming rogue and had sat here for a week and a half waiting to _die_. Bucky doesn’t know that the signal can’t reach him, doesn’t know the space is safe, and simply waited to explode, be poisoned, or electrocuted.

Steve, for the second time today, thinks he might throw up. He gets close enough that he shifts part way to his feet, startling Bucky who had been looking relatively calm, but then the urge subsides and Steve sinks back to the floor. He takes a moment to gather himself before continuing.

“Well, there’s a solution,” Steve says, wondering how to best offer Tony’s help. “We can get them out, the kill switches.” Bucky doesn’t comment—not yet—and simply waits for Steve to continue. “My friend Tony knows what to do.”

“Tony Stark.” Once again, like with Natasha, it’s not a question. Bucky knows who they all are, and Steve doesn’t know if that is helpful. He feels sure that Hydra drilled information about The Avengers into Bucky’s mind in an attempt to make him more of a weapon against them. Steve isn’t sure if the idea of them as the enemy—or target—can be fully undone.

“Yes, Tony Stark,” Steve affirms. “He looked at plans of your arm and thinks he can remove them.”

Bucky takes such a deep breath that Steve can see his shoulders raise, chest expanding beneath the thick blanket wrapped about him. It causes Steve anxiety over what he will say next.

“Okay.”

Steve thinks it’s too simple. “Okay? You’re not worried?”

“He’s your friend?”

There it is again, the way Bucky repeats the word ‘friend’ to Steve like it means so much. Steve feels it in his gut like a punch this time too. The source of the connotation seems obvious, but Steve is surprised by how strong the association still stands for Bucky so long after D.C.

“Yeah Buck, he’s my friend,” Steve answers.

“Then okay.”

 

Steve wonders how long they will be able to keep telling the new recruits that he is scouring Hydra files and European maps when he continually disappears with other members of the team. The observation skills Natasha and him have been teaching the newbies are going to be their downfall so long as Bucky must remain a closely guarded secret.

Wanda catches the tail end of Tony and Steve loading equipment into the elevator, just noticing Tony as he leaves his lab with a last armful of necessary supplies and Steve rolling Dum-E along. She voices a question to Tony about the tower, the security protocols, before leaving again.

“Think they suspect?” Steve asks as the doors click shut and the heavy elevator begins to descend.

“I think they know something bigger is going on,” Tony allows, “But no clue what exactly.”

The rest of the ride is silent. Before beginning to move all of the equipment down, Steve had demanded a play-by-play from Tony of what would happen. _He_ wants to be able to explain it to Bucky, for the process to be told from a person he trusts. Steve isn’t sure how much Tony is even going to be able to directly address Bucky without him panicking. Earlier in the evening, Bucky confided about as much to Steve before he left the floor to “bring Tony Stark”.

The way Bucky refers to everyone with code or full names unnerves Steve. It makes everyone sound like the details of a mission file. He knows that they were at one time for Bucky.

The elevator pings open and Bucky is not in view. “Set up out here,” Steve tells Tony before moving further into the Hulk floor to find Bucky. As expected, he has not moved from his spot on the bedroom floor.

Gentle coaxing and five minutes of time bring Bucky into the living room. Tony has set up his tools and equipment around one end of the sofa, Dum-E along the arm to assist where Steve can’t. Tony has explicitly been warned to not crack his usual jokes, to not say anything more than absolutely necessary, and Steve sees him stop himself from spewing a wisecrack already. This could end very badly if they’re not careful.

“Okay Buck, sit here and put your arm here,” Steve tells him, pointing to the soft arm of the sofa. “Tony is going to put a device on it so that you don’t move by accident.”

Steve nods to Tony when he sees that this sits fine with Bucky, his eyes remaining as calm as can be expected in the situation. Tony moves and presses a small device to the inside of Bucky’s metal bicep where it automatically adheres and begins emitting the EMP signal.

“Okay?” Steve checks. Bucky nods, not looking him in the eyes. Steve can’t help but already feel like he has lost Bucky’s trust, despite knowing it is simply nerves.

“Now, he’s going to open the metal plates,” Steve says, recognizing the tool Tony pulls from the toolbox. Steve holds his breath as Tony uses it to pry on the plating, causing the mechanics to whirr and retract to reveal the wiring inside.

Bucky’s right hand grasps at his knee, flexing as he stresses over what is happening to the other arm. His whole body tenses, nerves coiling his muscles into taut masses. Instinctually, Steve reaches out and presses his own hand over Bucky’s in a comforting gesture.

Everyone freezes as they realize what has just happened. Well everyone except Bucky. He carries on watching Tony as he absentmindedly knits his fingers through Steve’s and grips tighter.

“Tony go,” Steve instructs as he watches Bucky. Having a death grip on Steve’s hand, a bruising grip that would be hurting a normal person, is helping him. Tony complies, quickly opening more of the plates until the wiring in Bucky’s upper arm is mostly exposed.

“He’s looking for the explosive’s wiring,” Steve tells Bucky. They both watch as Tony delicately picks through the colored wires. Bucky squeezes harder as Tony pays particular attention to one. “Is that it?” Steve asks, and Tony nods in confirmation. “Okay Buck, he’s going to cut that wire now,” Steve tells him. “And the explosive will be disabled.”

Tony snips, Bucky flinches, and nothing explodes. Steve didn’t realize that he had held his breath for a moment. “Okay, next is the shock device?” Tony shakes his head. Steve thinks. “Removing the explosive materials?” Tony nods.

Dum-E holds back wiring as Tony looks beneath it, finding the would-be source of the explosion and extracting it from amongst the wiring and mechanisms inside the arm. The operation continues in this fashion, Steve narrating to Bucky to the best of his abilities as Tony does what he is best at; tinkering. It is slow progress as Bucky’s arm is a maze of mechanics; finding the correct wires and parts to remove or nullify is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

After the shock mechanism and explosive are out of Bucky’s metal bicep, Tony closes the plating and checks that the EMP bug is still operating correctly. Then, he begins removing the plating on the inside of Bucky’s forearm, where the poison lies. This seems easier, if Steve is making tails or heads of Tony’s work, as the majority of the arm’s motors are housed in Bucky’s bicep. Lower in the arm is all of the tiny wiring for Bucky’s fingers, their nimbleness and sensitivity explained by the rainbow of wires behind the shiny metal plates.

“And that has the poison?” Steve asks as Tony removes a small black encasement with a tube running from it.

Tony nods and Bucky seems to relax some; all of the kill switches are finally removed. A glance at the clock tells Steve that is past 10 p.m., meaning that the entire operation took a little over two hours. Glancing down at Bucky, he can see that the hours of vigilant nervousness have taken their toll. The super soldier looks like he could fall asleep at that very moment.

“Do you want to go back to the bedroom?” Steve asks Bucky as Tony removes the EMP from the arm after closing the last of the plates. Steve doesn’t miss the way Tony takes a large step back afterwards, distancing himself from the metal limb now that it is fully functional again.

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately, slowly flexing his left fingers and then lifting the arm off of the sofa. It seems that he expects a change in the functionality of his metal arm, but none exists. He doesn’t seem to notice that the fingers of his other hand are still laced with Steve’s.

In the end, Bucky retires to his spot on the floor in the bedroom while Steve and Tony head back upstairs with the equipment from the latter’s lab.

“I’m going to run some tests on this,” Tony tells Steve, holding up the small container for the poison. “I have a curiosity about Hydra tech, but it will be out of the building before you wake up tomorrow.”

Steve nods, fine with the situation. “And the explosive?”

“I’ll fly it out to the ocean in my suit, completely safe except for the fish.”

“Thank you Tony,” Steve tells him earnestly. “I have no idea what we would have done without you.”

“No problem Capsicle.”

They ride the rest of the way to the lab in silence. Steve rolls the metal toolbox back to its spot between two large lab tables and then turns to Tony. “Is there any way Friday will know if signals have been going to the…?” he motions to the small bin Tony carries with the shock device, poison, and explosive.

“You mean if anyone was trying to kill him?”

Steve forces a large, calming breath out his nose. “…You did so well downstairs.”

“Sorry, not good about the whole sensitive thing unless I am focusing which, let’s be real, I have filled that quota for the day.”

Steve lets it slide, focusing back on his inquiry instead. “So is there any way to know if any signals have been sent?”

“Friday, any remote signals tried to reach Bourne’s room?”

“Only one, a low frequency signal about an hour ago.”

“Show me the diagnostics.”

“Of course Mr. Stark.” One of the glass screens suspended over the worktables lights up with information. Steve cannot make heads nor tails of it, but he does put together some pieces: a signal had been sent to the building while Tony was working on the metal arm, meaning either a major coincidence was at play or somehow, someone had known changes were being made to the limb.

“I can’t trace the source of the signal now that it is gone,” Tony tells Steve as he looks at the data, “but I can tell you that this frequency is long range and can only be emitted by few detonators that run on Mercury batteries. Basically, it’s archaic.”

“Watch what you’re calling archaic,” Steve jokingly warns.

“My guess is that they received a signal when I disconnected something within his arm and they immediately hit terminate. They will have no idea where he is, Friday didn’t find any microchips, but they will know someone tinkered with his arm. But—here’s the bright side—they’ll think he’s dead.”

Steve fully understood why that was a bright side to the situation, but he also had trouble ever conceiving Bucky being dead as a good thing. Tony continued to absorb information from the screen for a moment, then returned to putting away tools as Steve watched, before Tony settled down to begin satisfying his curiosity.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow morning after you’ve slept?” Steve asks.

“Amend that to only the first six words,” Tony tells him. Steve just smiles and calls the elevator, ready to head to his apartment for the night.

Steve’s sleep is not restful however. It is plagued by nightmares, and—unlike before—these he cannot wake himself from.

Bucky is sitting in the corner of a dimly lit, dank prison cell, cement walls at his back. He is curled in on himself, but his limbs look wrong, the contorted angles of his body unnatural. Steve feels a need to go to him, to help him but every time Steve takes a step forward, Bucky remains the same distance away. He tries to call but his voice does not leave his throat, a silent scream into a void. So he runs, but the faster his steps, the faster Bucky now recedes, his corner of the cell moving further and further away. Steve tries to yell, to make some noise, and as he shouts his throat raw to no avail, the walls begin to bleed, dark blood oozing from the seams of the cement and pooling on the floor. Steve’s feet are heavy now, sodden with blood rising higher and higher. Bucky does not seem to notice though, just lying warped in the corner as the blood rises closer and closer to his face.

Just as it reaches Bucky’s mouth, Steve screams and noise finally leaves his lips, a terrible cry into the night and he is awake, sitting bolt upright in bed in the Avenger’s Tower.

Gasping breaths wrack Steve’s body as he gets his bearings. He realizes that his bedside lamp is flickering on and off, Friday’s attempt to wake him.

“Are you quite alright?” the AI asks, genuine worry in her voice.

Steve does not answer for a moment as he notices the state of his bed; the pillows have all made their way to the floor, a symptom of his thrashing. The blankets are tangled around his feet, so tight that the quilt is constricting the blood flow to his toes. Steve quickly works to free his feet from the blanket, tossing it off his body completely as he hangs his head into his hands. His toes hurt as the blood slowly moves back into them, deprived of it for long enough that it can even hurt him.

“Steve, do you wish for me to call Ms. Romanov?” Friday asks. Steve finds it interesting that Friday has come to default to Natasha should something be wrong. He knows it is a solid line of thinking for the AI to be following considering her ability to handle any and every situation thrown at her.

“No, I’m fine,” Steve insists, finally standing and exiting his bedroom. He moves to the small kitchen, fishing a bottle of water from the back of the fridge and then dropping himself heavily onto the sofa. He is glad for once of how dreams fade so quickly from the mind upon awaking, as the imagery of Bucky beginning to drown in blood is harder and harder for him to recall.

Steve does not sleep the rest of the night, scared of returning to the nightmare. The TV flashes infomercials, vacuums and blenders and a bag that can carry two water bottles _and_ an umbrella all in the back pocket. Steve doesn’t watch any of it, just sits slumped on the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, and stares at the bare wall beneath the television.

 

The next day, Steve blames his intrusive questions on his utter lack of sleep. He had never lapsed back into it, spending the hours until sunrise with his eyes focused on the drywall.

“How did you end up in Sokovia?” Steve asks an hour into _Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs_. Neither of them are absorbed in the film—Steve is trying not to power nap on the sofa—and he can’t help the question from slipping out.

“I stole a car,” Bucky tells him simply.

Steve’s patience with Bucky’s strange conversations is somehow endless. “Yes, but why did you want to go to Sokovia, Buck?”

“Because you were there.”

The answer incapacitates Steve for a moment, his lungs and heart stuttering. Perhaps today wasn’t a good day to pry, as his overtired mind can’t hold back the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “Because of me?”

“I needed you.” Steve thinks stabbing himself might actually hurt less than this conversation. Actually, he had been stabbed before. He does know that it hurts less.

“So you went into a… a post-war zone and just slummed it?” Steve asks incredulously.

“No, I looked for you.” Bucky speaks like it should be obvious. “And then didn’t find you… so I failed.”

 _And then you stopped eating for a week, and then you became too emaciated to continue and I found you half dead, and living off adrenaline._ It isn’t a pleasant thought for Steve. He wonders for a moment how many other “failures” came before Bucky in Sokovia that also contributed to his malnutrition. Steve is just glad that tomorrow marks seven days since the incident with Natasha. Bucky will start eating again.

Steve misses the days when Bucky was a bottomless pit. He was the friend who always asked if you were going to finish, the vacuum cleaner for leftovers. Sure it had been rough sometimes to make ends meet when one of them could stomach a whole cow, but Steve would have taken that side of Bucky over this in a heartbeat.

“How much do you remember?” Steve suddenly asks. He had refrained thus far from asking, not sure if he wanted to know the truth, but now he can’t stop himself. It is one of the first times he has allowed himself around Bucky to think of the times before serums and wars, specifically so that he wouldn’t do this.

“From before?”

“Yeah, from before Hydra and Zola.”

“I was a soldier, right? For the U.S.S.R.”

“Yeah you were Buck. What about before the war?”

There is a long pause that makes Steve’s heart race. “There is a place with bright lights, and people shouting, and the smell of… fried food?”

“That’s Coney Island. We went there a lot.”

“I don’t remember you.” The look on Steve’s face must make Bucky want to elaborate. “I don’t remember you being on Coney Island.”

“Do you remember me in Brooklyn?”

“There’s a small home, with an alley. I remember a lot of alleys.”

“Probably because I got beat up in so many and you had to save my punk ass.”

“I can’t remember any fights.” Steve tries to not react to what Bucky is saying. He is trying to phrase it differently but it is the same proclamation as before: He doesn’t remember Steve being there.

“Do you have any memories of me?” Steve coaxes, terrified for the answer.

“I remember D.C.” Bucky states simply. It feels like someone has just ripped Steve’s heart straight from his chest. Bucky can’t recall him. “But I remember the… idea of you. I know you make me feel… better.” Steve’s heart is gently set back into his chest cavity, not unharmed but not broken. He stops asking questions after that.

That night, Steve wakes himself screaming from a dream of Bucky being attacked by a member of Ultron’s robot army. He is shrieking, in pain, and Ultron is going to have him killed, to take the last thing that matters from Steve. He tries to help Bucky, but his shield isn’t on his arm where it rested a moment before and his legs feel heavy and the robot is ripping at Bucky but Steve feels helpless as a shiny pool of blood begins to leak across the ground beneath their struggling bodies. He wakes with a start, throat raw. The sweat pouring down his face gets in his eyes and he blinks salted tears from them.

“You look like crap,” Tony tells him when Steve enters the kitchen the next morning.

“Good morning to you too,” Steve replies.

Natasha is studying him with worried eyes and he tries to placate her with a meaningful look, but she doesn’t buy it. “Not all of us get beauty sleep,” she quips. She is trying to distract Tony, take the attention away from his disheveled state and turn the observation into a joke.

“Bagel or toast Craptain?” Tony asks and Steve realizes with a start that Tony is actually making food. Not pulling prepackaged goods from the pantry, but _making_ food.

“It’s a historical moment,” Rhodes tells Steve when he sees the surprise evident on his face. “I already sent a picture to Pepper and she accused me of photoshop.”

“I would have too,” Natasha assures.

“Sir, there is a visitor in the building,” Friday tells them suddenly. “Mr. Barton is on his way up and requests a mimosa.”

“Mr. Barton has no right to make such requests after ignoring my call yesterday,” Natasha answers the AI for Tony.

“I’ll let him know,” Friday responds.

“So Clint is back?” Wanda says. Steve had not noticed her enter. Vision and her appear to have disembarked the elevator only moments before. There is an excited gleam to her eyes and Steve remembers how close her and Clint become after the battle in Sokovia. The days of recovery afterwards had mostly been Clint and Wanda somehow creating a bond somewhere between an older brother to a younger sister and a father to his child. Steve hadn’t pretended to understand it then and still didn’t now, but he was glad that they were both happy.

“Looks like we will busy this morning with a reunion,” Steve notes. He is more than willing to let the team take some time to reunite rather than force more tactical information onto the newbies. He could use the break too after last night.

Tony burns his first attempt at a bagel for Steve but succeeds with the second after tweaking the toaster settings. As Steve is making himself the strongest cup of coffee possible, the elevator pings open to reveal Clint. He is dressed as casually as Steve is used to seeing him, green Adidas hoodie and comfortable jeans on with his stoic face just about as animated as Steve has ever seen it.

Natasha is the first to greet him, skipping to the elevator in a prance that exemplifies the fact that she was trained in ballet. They engulf each other in a hug, Clint playfully rocking her back and forth. Steve can’t help but think that if they had met in a different time and under different circumstances—before Clint was married to his civilian wife for example—that they would have been the ones who tied the knot.

Clint makes the rounds, saying hi and dishing out hugs as he goes. He purposefully talks to everyone, letting his hugs last long enough to be comforting and his words genuine as he asks how each member of the team has been. The Avengers are something more than blood and kin. There is a force behind risking your life beside someone that brings you together like nothing else. It always gives Steve a sense of nostalgia to think about it, reminding him of the Howling Commandos.

“You need to get more sleep,” is Barton’s greeting to Steve, and behind him Tony informs Clint that his new nickname is Craptain America. Steve forces a laugh to humor the two jokesters.

They spend breakfast filling Clint in on the newbies training and SHIELD’s current intelligence findings. Clint prefers a professional blackout when he is with his family, something they all respect. The only thing he keeps on is his phone, to be summoned at a simple call should all hell break loose.

Steve excuses himself after finishing his coffee and bagel, murmuring something about training being canceled and his need to scour more plans at the library. His super soldier metabolism keeps curiosity out of sight as he quickly makes another bagel and departs the floor with it. No one seems to give it a second thought as he heads to the elevator on the premise of returning to his apartment to gather his things. Instead, he of course heads down to check on Bucky.

The ex-assassin is seated on the couch, eyes focused on the elevator from the moment that the doors begin to open. After wordlessly leaving the bagel on the coffee table near Bucky, Steve fetches the newspaper from where he left it a different day. He may have finished the crossword puzzle, but he can still do the Sudoku.

The one facet of this new Bucky that Steve has the hardest time wrapping his head around is the vague questions. Now that Bucky is speaking more, elaborations are possible to coax from him but the basis for the lines of inquiry still leave Steve baffled. He however has no qualms with this, as they usually get to the point eventually.

Bucky is fixated on the concept of friends. Steve had seen this from day one after the rescue in Sokovia, from when he had assured Bucky that he had come to the tower under the safety of Steve and his friends. But now the fixation is becoming more apparent.

“How many friends?” Bucky asks as they sit in the kitchen. Steve had not rented a new movie this morning, but Friday logged Steve into Tony’s Netflix on a StarkPad and now Bucky is flipping through the kids shows—the only section Steve is permitting him to look through—and finding something he wants to watch.

“How many friends do I have?” Steve clarifies.

Bucky shakes his head. “How many are here?”

Bucky wants to know how many are in the tower. Does he want to know how many possible threats there are? Steve isn’t sure but decides to answer. “There are eight right now.”

Bucky nods like this information is important to him. It is silent again for several minutes. Bucky’s flesh hand moves across the screen as he scrolls through the shows. Earlier, he had been momentarily dismayed when his metal hand had not worked on the screen and Steve had to explain that it responded to body heat, not just the touch. He isn’t sure Bucky understood but now his metal hand is hidden safely beneath the countertop as he sits on one of the barstools.

“Avengers,” Bucky suddenly murmurs. Steve looks up, wondering what information Bucky just pieced together. Did he only just realize that Steve’s friends are all the Avengers?

Bucky meets his gaze and then slowly tilts the Starkpad so that Steve can see what is on the screen. It is the cartoon show, _Avengers Assemble_ that Bucky has stopped at. “You and your friends are the Avengers.”

So he does know, but it is coming up for an innocent reason. Steve understands the confusion of the show title. “Yes, they made a TV show about us.” Steve isn’t sure how the hell to explain more though if Bucky doesn’t understand.

“It is a story about you?”

“Yes.” Bucky selects it. Steve doesn’t know if this is a good or bad thing.

They watch avidly together as simplistic versions of each member of the original Avengers team moves about the screen. It’s strange to see such stripped down versions of his friends: Tony is just a sassy scientist, Clint a prankster, Natasha your classic spy, Banner permanently green, Thor all gusto and muscle, and Steve himself overly serious and patriotic. Bucky watches with insatiable curiosity, pointing to each character with the name he knows them by.

“You.” “The Widow.” “Iron Man.” “The Hulk.” “Hawkeye.” “Thor.” Steve wonders how Bucky is able to assimilate these caricatures into the mission files he undoubtedly has memorized. He wonders if every one of them has been in a mission file at some point in time.

“You’ve met both of them,” Steve reminds Bucky as the screen cuts to a shot of just Tony and Natasha.

“Tony was much quieter.”

“Because I asked him to be,” Steve tells him. Bucky’s face, the usually stoic expanse, twitches as Tony quips about the mission in the show.

It ends up being the most positive, interesting day Steve has had with Bucky. Each time Steve checks on his friend, he is seated somewhere else in the apartment, still with the StarkPad (Steve brought him a charger on the second visit down and made sure he knew how to plug it in when the tablet began running low on battery) watching _Avengers Assemble_. After the day it follows, it is a highly relaxing and rewarding situation to be in.

“How many episodes have you watched today?” Steve asks absentmindedly as he settles onto the couch to read after dinner, _The Martian_ in hand. Tony had assured him that “even his thick skull could understand the science explanations in that book” so Steve had decided to give it a try.

“I don’t know,” Bucky told him, eyes never leaving the screen. There was a pause, then “I like Hawkeye.”

“Well Barton doesn’t make _quite_ that many jokes in real life,” Steve tells him, “but the character is pretty accurate.”

“Can I meet him?”

Steve thinks he has misheard. Surely Bucky did not actually just request that? The Bucky who threw a fork at Natasha, who had anxiety for hours while Tony worked on his arm to save his _life_ did not just willingly offer to meet someone new.

Steve’s mouth flounders for a moment and he is glad that Bucky’s attention is so highly trained on the StarkPad. “Yeah, yeah you can, Buck.”

 

Steve corners Barton upstairs later, asking him to talk somewhere private.

“What is all the secrecy about Cap?” Barton asks, unused to being asked to convene away from the team, secrets an oddity. “Is this about Bulgaria? Because I know things got a little weird while in Plovdiv but that mission was messing with everyone’s head—“

“Why is Friday telling me I’m needed?” Natasha’s voice cuts Clint off. She enters the apartment quietly, the door almost silently clicking shut behind her. Steve had asked Friday to hail her. Once she notices the company in the room, she is quick to put two-and-two together.

“Oh, we’re letting Barton in on hot gossip,” she observes.

“Gossip? What are we, in high school?”

“Better, we are on an elite superhuman government agency team,” Steve tells him. “Now listen, we found Bucky.”

Perhaps being so blatant was not the best route as Clint stops himself from sitting in the armchair beside the television in favor of shooting Steve an incredulous look. “I know Nat and Sam were helping you but I honestly never—Shit.”

“He was in Sokovia,” Natasha elaborates and this is why Steve asked her to be here, because when he is emotionally compromised to the subject at hand, she can fill in the words he can’t find. Up until Bucky’s return, Steve doesn’t think he was ever this scatter brained.

“…Was?” Clint says, realization dawning on his features.

There is a pause. “He’s on the 39th floor.”

“Jesus Christ,” Barton swears, finally letting himself flop into the armchair. “Is he… safe?”

“Safe from harm? Yes,” Steve answers, knowing he warped the question but unable to hide the bite in his voice. Does Barton really think Steve would keep a potential threat in the building?

“He can’t leave the floor,” Natasha says, actually answering the archer’s question. “And only Steve has contact with him right now as he is sometimes…volatile.”

“Except not lately,” Steve corrects, not wanting Clint to get the wrong impression considering what Steve is about to request of him. Natasha shoots him a look, wondering what Steve is up to. “Tony was able to look at his prosthetic and that went okay, and he is very interested in the fact that there are others in the building.”

“So wait… you said something about this being a big secret. Who all knows?”

Natasha and Steve share a quick, guilty look. Steve knows they should have told the team, knows that he is betraying their trust to keep Bucky in the tower without their knowledge. “Just us, Sam, and Tony.”

“And now you,” Nat adds.

“So half the team doesn’t know?”

“No.”

Clint takes a deep breath. “First off, you _have_ to tell them. Second off, what the hell is the plan with this guy? He tried to _kill_ you in D.C., Steve.”

Barton doesn’t seem to care that Steve visibly flinches at the last sentence. “He’s different now, he broke the programming,” Steve tells Barton. “At this point, it’s more like looking after a scared animal than the Winter Soldier.”

“And you’re telling me all this because…?”

Steve should really give Clint more credit. They always pegged Natasha as the perceptive one but Barton knew there was more to this conversation than simply informing him of Bucky’s residency. “Because he wants to meet you.”

The explanation as to why takes some time, as well as discussing everything to _not_ do around Bucky once Clint agrees. In the end, he is to accompany Steve to the 39th floor some time the next day.

In the meantime however, Steve has explaining to do to the team. That evening has another visitor, almost as if Clint and Thor had planned their returns to avenging together. The God of Thunder slams down on the aircraft landing pad upstairs, just in time for dinner.

As everyone spreads out with their plates of tacos, Thor beelining for his favorite spot on the sofa, Steve calls them to a halt.

“Sorry guys, but we’ve got something to talk about,” he tells them while motioning to the oversized dining table.

Sam and Tony both have knowing looks on their faces, but everyone else is completely confused as to why Steve is calling for the formality. Once everyone is seated, Steve carefully places his hands before him on the table, interlocking his fingers.

“Avengers, I have been keeping something from you. And it’s unfair to the team to do so.” Vision looks honestly worried that Steve is about to drop an atom bomb of a secret, while Wanda sits beside him with curiosity. The contrast is stark. “I have been conducting a side mission, of personal importance, as some of you know,” Steve continues. Everyone from the original Avengers team knew he was looking for Bucky, but it had not been a point made to the newbies, as by that time the trail was so cold Steve had almost conceded to a mission failure. Thankfully, Sam, Nat, and him had held out just enough hope. “This is classified information, facts without a clearance level. We don’t speak of this to anyone outside this room.” The clarification is needed, as Steve still does not trust SHIELD operatives. The only person not seated at the table he would even be vaguely okay with knowing about Bucky’s presence is Agent Hill. Her time to be informed will come he supposes. “My childhood friend, Bucky Barnes, was The Winter Soldier,” Steve says. Over half the table already knew this, but Vision, Wanda, and Rhodey must be informed. “Two weeks ago, I found him and brought him here.”

What follows is a question and answer sequence that rivals many of the press junkets they are forced to schedule after each time they save the world. Pepper manages the PR of the team and insists that to remain favorable and human to the public, they must answer the reporters’ questions, even if they don’t actually say anything of importance; they only have to sound like they are. Now, Steve _does_ say things of importance, answering every question honestly and to his fullest capabilities. Each one eases the tension he had felt upon embarking with the conversation, the fear that there would be anger at his somewhat selfish secret. Despite wanting to protect Bucky, Steve still feels that it was hurtful and possibly dangerous to not tell everyone who else resided in the tower. But the main concern of the team is if Steve is safe to be with Bucky, to be spending half his time, or more, on the 39th floor with him. The other questions pertain to his recovery, and Steve forces himself to explain what he has gathered of Bucky’s slow return to personhood, as well as his treatment under Hydra.

“We are getting to the point that he may be able to handle interaction with someone besides me,” Steve says, glancing from Tony to Clint, “But it’s still… dangerous to do so as he is reactive.”

“I wish to meet him when I can,” Thor proclaims. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine, Captain.”

“Thank you,” Steve tells Thor honestly. “That would mean a lot to him I think.” To himself, Steve wonders how long it will be before Bucky is capable of handling a conversation with such a loud personality as Thor, but he remains confident that such a time _will_ come. All in all, the talk with the Avengers goes well and Steve thinks how lucky he is to be amongst such marvelous comrades.

Steve goes to bed with a feeling of contentment that has not been present in a long time. Hope seems more within grasp than ever. Bucky is eating again and they have more help on their side than ever before.

It is too good to be true. At exactly 2:06 in the morning, the lights in the room flash and Friday begins saying Steve’s name in an effort to wake him from his deep sleep.

“What? What is it?” Steve mumbles, mind foggy. He had slept without dreaming--a wonderful reprieve from the night terrors he had been experiencing--and the actual rest he feels in his bones is almost disorientating.

“Mr. Barnes is having a nightmare and will not wake.” Steve is on his feet in seconds, the blur of sleep forgotten. He feels like he has chugged an entire pot of coffee. “He is thrashing and could cause himself harm.”

Friday says the last words as Steve exits his apartment, careening down the short hall to the elevator. Friday already has the doors open and waiting, closing them as soon as Steve enters to bring him down to Bucky’s floor.

As soon as Steve’s broad shoulders can fit through the elevator doors after the descent, he pushes past. He immediately can hear noises from the bedroom, murmurs and exclamations as Bucky vocalizes the terror of his dream.

“Buck!” Steve calls as he sprints through the doorway, dropping to the floor beside the tangle of body and blanket to look down at his friend. Bucky’s face is covered in sweat, hair sticking to his temples, and his teeth are gritted tight enough that his jawbone flexes against the gaunt skin of his face. “Bucky, wake up!”

The calling of his name does nothing, and Steve flounders as Bucky kicks out, feet tangled and self-defense initiated. He rolls, hitting Steve’s knees and flinging his arms out, like he is blocking a physical blow. Then, to Steve’s horror, he shrinks back on himself, a low whine emitting from deep in Bucky’s chest, and every muscle in his body tenses. Whatever he is fighting in his dream, Bucky appears to be resigning to the harm.

Steve impulsively grabs Bucky by the shoulder, shaking. “Bucky!”

The soldier’s body jumps like he has been startled, but his eyes stay closed. They rapidly move behind his eyelids, the small muscular twitches uneasy to watch. Steve puts his other hand on Bucky, unsure that if he were to wake at that very moment if he would be attacked or not for the physical contact. “Bucky,” Steve snaps, thinking perhaps a sharper noise will do the trick but still Bucky does not wake.

Remembering how Bucky had laced their fingers while frightened of Tony’s work on his prosthetic, Steve tries that now, reaching across Bucky to find his flesh hand amongst the comforter and wrap the bony hand in his own calloused one. It’s a hard action to take, not only because Steve has been resisting his instinct to touch Bucky but also because Bucky is tossing and turning again, the moving from wrapping around his own torso to being thrown forward and then back again.

When Steve does get a hold of it, Bucky’s movements immediately stop, but soft whimpers continue. They are small sounds of pain, of hurt and fear. They remind Steve of himself, of his years before the serum that were plagued by pains and sickness. Then, Bucky had often comforted Steve with body warmth and contact, a reminder that he wasn’t fighting the ailments alone. Now, Steve feels himself kick into autopilot and do the same, relaxing to the floor to wrap himself around Bucky’s form. He makes sure to not hold too tight, to not restrain Bucky against his will or to hurt him should he suddenly thrash again. Steve ends up with Bucky’s head propped on his chest as Steve reclines on the floor. His arms are wrapped around Bucky, but leaving his arms free of the embrace, and their legs tangled beneath the blanket. It’s the first time Steve has held Bucky like this in his modern memory, and his mind suddenly lapses into the past, trying to find a moment during the war that mirrors this, the last time he had embraced his best friend. He feels sure that it was sometime in the days before the Howling Commandos mission in the Alps but he can’t be sure. Steve almost feels disappointed in himself for not knowing the exact last time he had hugged Bucky before he had been ripped away from him by a cliffside and Hydra.

Bucky seems to be dozing, the whimpers having stopped now that Steve has him cradled against his chest. Somehow, he has not woken and it worries Steve. As an assassin, he imagined Bucky a light sleeper, ready to defend himself at a moment’s notice. This feels wrong. Steve wonders if the years of brainwashing have seen their effect on Bucky’s mind, weighing it down with the scars of years of abuse. Should he be worried?

Lying like this feels so right though, a contact that once was normal for them. They had lived in an largely unheated Brooklyn apartment together after all, as well as Steve’s bouts with pneumonia and other sickness. Perhaps the relaxation Steve feels in himself is also present in Bucky, the familiarity of one another a comfort present enough to give him restful sleep.

After several minutes of gentle slumber, Bucky’s eyes blink awake, the soft flutter of his eyelashes palpable through Steve’s thin pajama shirt.

“Stevie?” Bucky asks, and Steve feels himself physically react to the nickname. He hasn’t heard it in over seventy years, _seventy years_ , and he didn’t know until it was said how much he missed it.

“Yeah Buck, I’m here.”

It is silent for several minutes, neither of them making any indications of moving from the current position. Steve’s back hurts, the hard floor and lack of a pillow taking their toll, but he won’t change a thing unless Bucky wants it.

“Will you stay?” Bucky asks, voice smaller than Steve has ever heard it. It sounds like he is afraid the shadows will hear his moment of weak admittance.

“Whatever you need, Bucky,” Steve tells him, rubbing one of his thumbs gently where it lies on Bucky’s shoulder. It passes over the seam of the metal arm to Bucky’s skin and the man in his arms shudders once as he does so. Steve stops the movement.

Minutes later, Bucky’s breathing is long and slow: asleep again. Steve waits to make sure that this doze will last, and then allows himself to close his eyes and seek rest as well.

That afternoon, before Clint accompanies Steve to see Bucky (a meeting that goes surprisingly well, if short. Bucky can only handle so much stimulation, and Clint proves a bit much at moments but respectful of everything Steve told him about Bucky) Steve discusses the night before with Sam.

“I think that with eating again, his brain is beginning to work at a cognitively higher level. Like he can actually string together real thoughts, real sentences in his mind,” Sam thinks aloud. “So dreaming would come back into play. Sleeping's not just a dead tired, pass out but actually restful and his mind can work during it.”

Steve nods. It makes sense, and Sam knows more about the mind than him, although it does him well to remember that Sam is not a neurologist. Steve makes a mental note to look into contacting one, the idea of the repairs Bucky’s brain must make enough to make him knit his brow with worry.

 

Within a week, Bucky has met everyone on the team, albeit separately. _And_ he has heard Tony talk. Now, he accompanies Steve up to his own apartment sometimes, for a change of scenery and sofa. Sometimes, there is a third person present, the last spot on the couch taken by Wanda, Sam, Clint, Natasha, and one time Thor. The latter goes in and out, returning to Asgard as needed but also balancing time at the tower to remain up to date on SHIELD intel and the team’s status. Steve always takes the middle seat, Bucky pressed against any one else’s side too nerve wracking for him, but Steve doesn’t mind.

Despite her younger age and somewhat timid nature, Bucky and Wanda seem to take to one another. Steve has come to the assumption that their comfort stems from Wanda’s abilities. She never triggers Bucky’s anxiety outside of what he will always feel in the presence of other beings. Wanda can feel Bucky’s emotions, like wind in the air, even if she is not actively trying to feel his thoughts (an action she swears she will never take with him, understanding the invasion that would be on someone of currently such a fragile nature). Steve is convinced--and has heard her basically say as much--that the constant feedback she receives on Bucky’s feelings lets her actively alter her actions and own body language to be the least threatening possible. They hardly even exchange words, just bask in one another’s company. Sometimes, Wanda brings her laptop to Bucky’s floor and together they learn about little joyous things in the world. The first time Steve walks in on them doing this, they are Googling cuttlefish, watching YouTube videos of the vibrant creatures flee from the underwater cinematographers. Steve can’t help but smile when he sees light in Bucky’s eyes.

Natasha and Clint have a habit of discussing missions, so Steve is forced to forbid them from spending copious amounts of time around Bucky together. Individually, they log quite a few hours however. Clint is remarkably fond of animated movies, and suggests a plethora of films for Steve to rent for Bucky and insists on watching each one as well. Ever since visiting his safe house and Clint’s biggest secret was revealed to the team, Steve thinks he acts more and more like the father he is everyday. It is refreshing to know that Clint is being himself with them.

Natasha is now the one bringing Bucky lunch most days, the afternoons dedicated to Steve’s time with the newbies. The party room, with its large dining table and location away from the lounging team members the floor below, becomes their new “classroom” as Steve schools them in every detail of avenging. They have reached a point where the new members simply need to be brought up to date on SHIELD intel and theories on international threats, the plethora of knowledge available to them that is ever handy on missions. Some days, they can hear Tony working in his lab in the loft space, but Pepper’s return from time abroad means that he has been preoccupied elsewhere some days. All in all, it is as much of a learning space as they could hope for in the tower.

The days are long, full, and mostly wonderful.

 

It is Tuesday night, rain pattering the windows with increasing intensity and the weather channel on in the Avenger’s living room. Wanda had made pasta for everyone and now they are seated around the room, enjoying their dinner and discussing the chances of the rain becoming a thunderstorm later in the night.

Steve holds concern for Bucky, as he knows how thunderstorms sometimes mystify his own mind, especially if he is asleep. It always brings Steve into a panicky headspace where he is forced to remind himself that there is no explosions, no grenades or Hydra weapons, just the weather. He can’t imagine what it would be like for Bucky as he is still growing accustomed to having a real life again.

Even though Bucky is getting better, environments such as tonight’s with so many people, multiple conversations around the room and voices calling across the space, are still too much for him, more than four people in total too overwhelming.

“Tony, has the tower ever been struck by lightning?” Sam asks, addressing Stark where he is gently swinging the seat of his barstool back and forth, a loud squeak emitting from it on each turn.

“Almost every storm,” Tony answers. “It’s well equipped to handle it, enough lightning rods up there to even handle Thor.”

“No building can handle lightening when fueled by my wrath!” Thor barks, voice booming from across the room. He is taking up an entire sofa himself, legs stretched down the cushions. It is odd to see the God of Thunder looking so domestic, relaxing in sweatpants and woolen socks.

“Good thing you’ve got no grudges with the tower,” Clint chimes in.

The bantering continues for a few minutes as Rhodey flips through the channels, done with watching the weather radar move across the screen.

“Wait, go back!” Wanda suddenly calls. Rhodey flips back one channel. It is Cartoon Network that is on the TV now. “Is that…Tony?”

They all glance to the screen as Natasha answers her question. “Did you not hear? We have our own TV show now.”

Wanda watches the screen with curiosity as a cartoonized Clint is punched by The Hulk for eating his guacamole. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope,” Tony says, popping the P. “The kids love us, so SHIELD gave them the okay to release a super hero cartoon. How did you not know?”

“Bucky loves it,” Steve says absentmindedly, then wonders too late if it’s strange for Bucky to be watching a cartoon about the people he knows.

“That’s why he thinks I am so funny,” Clint muses.

“I do not know where the idea that I wish to wrestle with Banner came from,” Thor thinks aloud. “Perhaps it is the appeal of brute strength uniting.”

“Or it is the appeal of your thick skulls getting knocked around that they—“ Clint starts before cutting himself off as the lights go out, the TV flicking off on a shot of Steve’s all too serious cartoon face. The room is plunged into darkness, the only illumination from the city lights outside the long wall of windows.

“We run off a reactor, we should never lose power,” is the first thing Tony says. Lightning flashes across the sky, completely lighting the room for a split second. Everyone is frozen besides Tony, who’s arm is outstretched, calling the iron man suit. “Something is wrong, something is very wrong.”

“Be on alert, this isn’t an accident,” Steve tells everyone. He glances towards the elevator, wondering if he should be running to Bucky’s side. Then he glances up, to where his shield is stored beside his Captain America suit one level above. Which is the imperative?

A bang sounds as Tony’s suit struggles to make its way downstairs despite the hatch it normally uses being unable to open. Wanda reaches out, red energy emitting from her hands to pry open the trapdoor. The iron man suit shoots through and beelines for Tony, assembling onto his body. On the other side of the room, Mjolnir flies from beside the fridge into Thor’s hand.

“Three o’clock!” Sam yells as suddenly shadows appear outside the Eastern windows.

The figures are swinging on grappling wires and as they near the window, Steve sees that they have their feet braced for contact. “Stay clear!” he yells just as they crash into the panes, the hefty boots on their feet somehow breaking the bullet proof glass of the tower. Shards rain from the panes, covering the floor in hazardous debris. For every pane of glass down the entire wall, at least one enemy figure has entered the room. They are outnumbered.

Gunshots sound from Steve’s left and Natasha is there, handgun raised and firing bullets at the assailants. One goes down before they have even disengaged themselves from the grappling harnesses.

One invader begins throwing canisters into the room, the contact with the floor causing them to pop open and release a sickly green gas. Steve trusts that it won’t affect him because of his increased metabolism but others are at risk.

“Retreat from the gas! Wanda, can you contain it?” When Steve catches sight of her, it looks like her training has abandoned her mind. She is frozen in place, not knowing how to proceed. “Wanda!”

As Natasha shoots bullets into the fray, she moves to Wanda’s side and bumps her, knocking her from the frightened trance. Immediately, she begins using her powers on the gas, attempting to force it back towards the broken windows.

Past them, Steve catches sight of Tony in the Iron Man suit flying out the windows, headed to the roof to hopefully restore power to the building. Thor is right behind him as he rushes to the ledge of the window, hammer raised as he gathers lightning from the storm to bring inside. Steve shudders to think of the damage that will do.

A bullet whizzes past Steve’s head and he turns back to the assailants. One is closer now, a gas mask adorning their face. The overall effect, with the spiked boots that broke the windows and heavy combat gear, is like an alien beast. Steve does not let himself dwell however, and immediately engages the foe.

With the shield, Cap is considered unbeatable to a normal human. Without, he still poses a great threat to his enemy. Now, he realizes that they may not be facing the average enemy. The first two punches he throws at the person are blocked, only the third hit—a kick—that he aims at their stomach landing. The person doubles for a moment and Steve intends to land a knee to the side of their head, when they straighten and catch his leg, twisting. Steve moves with the rotation instead of resisting and then pushes off with his other foot to roundhouse a kick to their neck. The assailant goes down heavily.

“Cap!” Steve turns to the call and sees Hawkeye on the stairs, flinging the patriotic shield in his direction. Steve reaches up and catches it before it can pass him by, then immediately redirects it to take out the enemy agent advancing on Wanda as she focuses on containing the gas. It bounces off his head, crumpling him to the ground immediately, before bouncing back to Steve who easily catches it on his arm.

It appears that the gas has not taken out any of his teammates as Steve takes a glance across the room and counts the correct number of heads that aren’t gas masked. There is a thud as Thor swings his hammer and knocks one of the stainless steel end tables through the air to take out another enemy swinging in through the window. As Steve focuses now, he realizes that there are more masked assailants swinging in through the windows. Steve turns back to where he last saw Natasha and now spots her across the room, one gun in each hand, acquiring them from her weapon treasure troves as she moves across the room. As he watches, she physically takes out an enemy that has charged and simultaneously shoots another just swinging in through the shattered wall.

“Nat, Tony is on the roof!” he calls, alerting her to the need for backup. Steve knows Tony won’t be able to handle the chaos of a fight as well as restore the building’s power. He will need someone to cover his six. Steve watches a moment as Natasha glances his way, nods subtly, sends one more bullet straight into the temple of an assailant, and then pivots towards the stairs, skipping the first eight as she grabs the railing closest to her and swings herself up.

Steve then slams his shield into an approaching enemy. They had apparently thought they were taking him by surprise, as the attack caught them completely off guard. They crumple to the glass-covered floor.

“Cap, check on our _missing person’s case_!” Sam calls across the room, voice carrying from past a cloud of gas. Wanda is hurriedly pushing it back, out the windows, but not fast enough. Steve knows whom Sam means immediately, brain thankfully ahead of his body.

He heeds the instructions, running to the elevator while looping the handles of the shield over his forearm. He realizes too late it will be useless, and that the emergency staircase entrance is on the opposite side of the floor, through the gas and the raging fight. Steve resigns to ripping the elevator doors open with brute strength, déjà vu hitting him like a punch as he remembers the betrayal at the Triskelion.

Once open, the dark elevator shaft is a daunting feat. Steve has no idea if the elevator is stopped on the first floor or only a few below. The meager light from the city outside the windows does nothing to illuminate the interior shaft.

“Anyone have a flashlight?” Steve quips before realizing that he isn’t on a comm unit. It startles him to realize how naturally the communication comes to him and how lost he suddenly feels without it in his ear.

A glance back towards the Avenger’s living room shows Steve that the fight is turning south and he momentarily battles within, unsure which party currently needs him more. Suddenly, a stream of bullets is pinging off the elevator doors either side of him, a masked figure with an automatic weapon bearing down. Without thinking, Steve moves his shield to defend himself, crouching behind the vibranium as he is assaulted.

The attack makes the decision for him: Steve slides between the doors and down into the elevator shaft, hanging from a metal beam just below floor level. The bullets stop, the attacker seemingly confused as to where Steve has gone, the exit unexpected. Steve doesn’t wait to see if the bullets continue though as he carefully scales down the wall, headed down three floors of dark elevator shaft.

It is a slow process, the complete lack of light a dangerous obstacle. Steve relies on his muscle endurance to hang by one hand and feel for new handholds, his feet doing the same below. He only knows his progress from the smooth presence of other floor’s doors, a count he must not lose track of.

At the 40th floor, Steve hears a noise below him. Craning his neck to peek over his shoulder, Steve sees the elevator doors past his feet being pulled open. The light is dim, just like that of the floors above, but he thinks he makes out the glint of a metal hand.

“Buck!” Steve calls, loud enough for the other man to hear but not to startle him.

Steve realizes his mistake as a dark head comes into view, a set of cold, clinical eyes alighting on him. The depth behind the eyes lacks, the human nature missing. This isn’t Bucky; it’s the Winter Soldier. Cold metal wraps around Steve’s ankle and then Bucky yanks, pulling Steve from the wall and, suddenly, they are falling.

Steve grabs at the air around him, fingers brushing the walls in an attempt to catch himself. Air rushes past his ears, drowning all other sounds. He fights the panic in his chest, the terror that this fall will be eternal. It is pitch black after all, nothing visible, not even his own hand directly before his face. Steve feels his fingers brush the wall and tries to hold on for a moment but his grip breaks. He knows that it would undoubtedly pull his shoulder out of its socket if he did manage to hang on—or worse tear tendon from bone—but the alternative is falling an unknown distance, until they find the elevator or the bottom of the shaft.

Suddenly, Steve hits something. The air is knocked from his lungs, the feeling like being hit by a semi-truck speeding eighty miles per hour. Every muscle feels bruised beyond belief, an entire body ache. They must have fallen more than twenty stories of the building, and Steve only landed half on his shield.

And then someone is scrambling to their feet beside him. The pitch darkness disorients Steve as he moves away from the noise, the soft whirring of the metal prosthetic moving leaving no questions as to who else resides in the darkness.

Steve feels his pulse quicken and fear clutch his chest as their last encounter threatens to invade his mind. No, he won’t let that panic set in. Not now.

The thoughts are effectively obliterated from his mind by the metal fist connecting with his face. It is a feeling Steve is all too familiar with as the skin breaks on his cheekbone. He rolls away, the sound of heavy footfalls following. They seem to be on the roof of the elevator from the deep echos of empty space sounding below as Bucky pursues Steve.

Suddenly the fist pounds down directly beside Steve’s head, the crack of it connecting with the metal elevator, machinery whirring as Bucky pulls his arm back to try again. Steve gasps in shock, pulling away rapidly, but the intake of breath alerts Bucky as to where he is _actually_ located. The prosthetic makes contact with Steve again, smashing into his face at an odd angle that knocks his jaw, a deep ache settling into the bones almost immediately. The punches aren’t quite as hard as he remembers, the muscles fueling the prosthetic not as developed as before, but the arm holds strength in of itself and still can bruise and break like hell.

“Bucky!” Steve yells, hoping to break through the mind control. “Buck, it’s me!”

Steve’s voice is his own downfall though, as Bucky uses it to locate him and continuously pursue with attacks. Steve narrowly misses a grab for his throat, the metal fingers just brushing his trachea as he moves backwards, slamming his back into the wall. Bucky is once again able to pinpoint his location perfectly and Steve is pinned against the cold metal of the elevator shaft. He rapidly hides his face behind the shield, assuming that is where Bucky will aim his next attack. As he does so, Steve jams a knee into Bucky’s stomach.

The resounding gasp of air finally gives him so indication as to where the hell Bucky’s head is and he performs the maneuver he has done before on this very person: he swings himself around, slipping out from against the wall, and hooks an elbow around Bucky’s throat. Then he squeezes.

Bucky fights back immediately, bucking wildly as Steve pulls him to the floor. His legs kick and there is a resounding crack as Bucky’s foot hits the wall with enough force to break bone. Steve thinks he might have. Bucky does not have enough air to shout in pain however, even if the Winter Soldier allowed himself that kind of emotional freedom.

As he struggles against Steve’s grip, his hands fly wildly. Bucky’s limbs are invisible to Steve and they knock into him, grappling to find a weakness on his body that will end the assault.

“Bucky, stop,” Steve tries to tell him as Bucky’s flesh hand finds his face. Steve throws his head from side to side, frantically trying to rid himself of Bucky’s grip as he tries to claw at Steve’s eyes. “Bucky, Bucky!”

And suddenly Bucky is free from Steve’s grasp, the prospect of losing an eye enough of a distraction to slacken the strangle hold. Bucky gasps for air but does not allow himself a moment for recovery, simply throws his whole body weight at the spot on the floor Steve had last occupied. Luckily, Steve has somewhat moved away, although not regained his footing, and Bucky slams into his legs. The right one twists painfully, his knee being pulled sideways. It is a completely unnatural angle, the kind that strains tendons.

Bucky grabs whatever of Steve he can get a hold of in the dark. The arm whirrs as Bucky tightens a hold onto Steve’s right shin and yanks, twisting as he goes. Something in Steve’s leg snaps and he screams in pain, an agony different than he has ever known searing through his knee—

And suddenly The Winter Soldier is gone. “Steve? Steve?! Oh god.”

Steve is aware of the pressure disappearing from above his body, and then the sound of someone scrambling away, a hasty retreat until a body slams into a wall.

“Buck,” Steve pushes from between gritted teeth. “It’s okay.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Bucky whimpers to himself, voice so close in the cramped elevator shaft and yet so far away.

Steve tries to move but his leg protests, the pain signals to his brain far too great for him to keep trying, his leg mostly unresponsive as he tells it to move. “Bucky, it is okay. You snapped out of it.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Bucky continues, small sobs now punctuating the space between the repeated word.

“Bucky!” Steve calls, but the soldier doesn’t hear him. Steve does not currently have the capacity for this, does not have the brainpower to think through his pain and handle a situation that is already out of his depth. By the sound of Bucky’s accelerated breathing, he is entering a panic attack and Steve can’t do jack shit.

“Bucky, Buck, hey, Bucky.” Steve’s mantra continues, desperate to knock Bucky from the fear he is encountering. What if he can’t? What will happen to Bucky then? What if no one finds them? What if they’re here for hours? Will his body heal fast enough for him to handle this? When will he be able to move? How soon? What if his body doesn’t heal? What if it’s permanent? What if the serum fails him? What if…

The thoughts continue like that, a ceaseless circle of worries running through Steve’s brain until he is unaware of his surroundings but wholeheartedly aware of the lack of air in his lungs. Barely conscious to the world, he does not register the return of the lights many hours later and Friday’s voice echoing in the elevator beneath them.

 

Later, when Steve finally thinks he can handle hearing the truth, he asks Clint and Natasha to tell him exactly what had happened, what terrible scene they had come across. He is lying in a hospital bed in Banner’s lab, the converted medical space following the attack on the tower. A large ACL brace brackets his knee and the doctor Tony had brought in keeps telling him not to move. It is infuriating to be so restrained when he knows he only needs a few days for the serum to knit the ligament back to his bone. The dislocated patella is another story, but Steve is electing to ignore the extent of his injuries.

“Well, both of you were… mentally incapacitated,” Clint begins. “Don’t know how long you’d been like that, but the power was back on by then so…”

“You were both having panic attacks,” Natasha says. Steve flinches but is also glad for her blatant explanation. He feels that he needs to know.

“And your leg was at the worst angle I think I’d ever seen so that kinda went top of the list,” Clint continues.

“So we had to get Thor in there since neither of us can pick you up, lowered you out the hatch in the top of the elevator and he flew you up to the team’s floor. Said you wouldn’t stop saying Bucky’s name the whole way. He didn’t think you even knew you were in the air.”

“And Bucky took forever to calm down, guess I was the one who finally broke through because I was the first who would risk touching him,” Clint says. Steve is incredibly glad that someone could break through Bucky’s panic, proof that Steve wasn’t the only antidote for the terrors that plagued Bucky’s mind. “It maybe wasn’t the best move,” Barton laughs as he looks down at his arm in the sling, “but someone had to do it.”

Two days Steve has to be bedridden, and after only six hours in Banner’s lab, he demands that he be moved to his room, where Bucky will be comfortable enough to actually see him.

“I hate to break it to you Cap, but I don’t think Barnes is up for leaving his room either,” Clint tells him as Steve carefully figures out how best to swing his immobilized leg from the bed.

“Why didn’t you tell me he is hurt!” Steve says, anguish in his voice.

“He’s not!” Clint assures, “He’s not physically. But being the Winter Soldier again, well that took its toll.” The look in Steve’s eyes is enough to elicit more from Clint. “He doesn’t want to see—or talk—to anyone.”

“But you and Nat and Wanda have been taking care of him, you guys said you took him food today, that you made sure he wasn’t hurt after the fall—“

“But that doesn’t mean he’s talking to us, or really moving from the floor of the bedroom! Steve, think about the Bucky you’ve been around. How did you think he was going to act?”

Steve knows he had been too hopeful in thinking that the progress Bucky had made would not have another setback, but it appears that a great one has planted its foot in Bucky’s path. Steve sighs, long enough to be dramatic, as he finally gets his leg off the bed so he is sitting on the side. “Then take me to see him.”

The tone of his voice leaves no room for argument and Clint fetches Thor, the injured arm Barton is nursing too much of a risk to support Steve to the 39th floor.

“I’ve got it from here,” Steve tells Thor when the elevator arrives, scared what the result will be if Bucky sees Thor supporting Steve into the room. Steve disentangles himself from Thor’s helpful arm and takes a few hobbled steps into the apartment.

“Are you sure, Captain?”

“Positive,” Steve says, then grits his teeth to endure the nail biting process of heaving himself towards the bedroom. Thor drops himself onto the sofa, reaching for the remote.

When Steve enters the bedroom, Bucky’s comforter, the one he swaddles himself in, is abandoned on the floor. Clint had mentioned that Bucky had not moved and Steve’s heart rate begins to accelerate. The bathroom door is half open and Steve heads towards to it, walking faster than he really should be with a torn ACL and dislocated kneecap.

As soon as he reaches the door, he knows he should have recognized that something was wrong sooner. The smell, the rawness of iron, is apparent now to Steve and his eyes falter at how much red he sees.

The room isn’t painted in blood, but there is easily enough to alarm Steve almost to the point of blind panic. For a moment, his brain is dysfunctional enough and Bucky is still enough that he can’t find him, fright bubbling up Steve’s throat and threatening to explode in a terrored yell of epic proportions, but then he sees Bucky, tucked between the edge of the vanity and the shower, a knife in his hand, frozen, as it digs at the seam of his prosthetic arm to his shoulder. Blood is seeping from it, a long stain down his shirt and covering his pants that makes Steve’s stomach flip, a large, crimson puddle around him that looks humanly impossible.

“Bucky, no!” Steve yells, voice thundering in the small space. Bucky stays frozen, like an opossum that believes he will be ignored if he is still enough. His eyes are on Steve, but have a hazy focus. He has lost so much blood…

“Buck,” Steve gasps, propelled back into motion. He hobbles forwards, crashing to the floor as he makes no move to ease his landing in his haste to remove Bucky’s hand from the hilt of the knife. He does not remove it, Steve knows that will only cause more bleeding, but holds Bucky for all he is worth, grips the bloodied man in his arms, slipping on the blood slicked tiles, and calls for Thor, calls for Friday, for anyone to help.

The words are barely out of his mouth before Thor appears, followed closely by a small crowd. Natasha enters the bathroom first following the initial shocking sight, Bucky not even flinching as she hastily approaches. By the amount of blood in the bathroom, Steve assumes Bucky is too far gone to really know what is happening. Natasha pulls Steve away, having to tug on his arms as they don’t seem to want to release Bucky. It is all a mess and neither super soldier is properly responding to what the others are saying and instructing them to do. Once Steve and Natasha are out of the way, Clint swoops in to scoop Bucky into his arms, Wanda at his side supporting the metal limb so that it does not swing, the knife in the flesh not causing more damage to the scarred—and now maimed—skin.

Steve doesn’t know when he started sobbing, but the tears run down his cheeks and the gasping sounds rip from his chest violently as he struggles to stand and pursue Clint as he hurries into the waiting elevator with Wanda at his side. Thor, hovering outside the action until now, hurries forwards to help the sobbing and stumbling Steve.

In one swift movement, he lifts Cap into his arms and boards the elevator too. As the doors click shut, Steve cranes his neck to see Bucky through the wetness in his eyes, reaching out a hand to touch some part of him, making contact with his blood stained side. There is blood everywhere, Bucky is soaked, Clint is getting there, Steve has a fair share, and is now transferring it to Thor’s sweater. The stench hangs in the air, overly pungent in the enclosed space of the elevator, and Steve leans away from Thor for a moment to vomit onto the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment and let me know what you think! Feedback is the only way I can improve for the other two chapters of this heathen. Don't hate me too much for my love of really fucked up shit and angst. I love it a lot. Thanks so much for making it this far!!


	3. Darling, So it Goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello Black Hills
> 
> Title from "Can't Help Falling in Love". The alternative title, if titles could be the instrumental part of a song, would be 2:39-3:16 of "The Unknown" by Imagine Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of trigger warnings apply for this chapter, as discussed in the initial author's note for this fic. If you want to ask about your specific triggers or the exact content of this chapter, always feel free to contact me on my [ tumblr ](http://freshstuckytrash.tumblr.com).

Over thirty stitches, an exuberant bribe from Tony to a doctor, and five pints of blood later Bucky is alive. It took the entire tower’s cleaning staff to remove the traces of red from the bathroom. Steve wanted to pay their salary for the day. Tony said he had already promised them time and a half.

Against better judgment, Steve has called a team meeting. Everyone is present, no one having left the tower other than for menial errands in the last two days. Bucky is even there, the attachment between Steve and him so strong as of recent events that he will tolerate the presence of so many to remain by Steve’s side. His metal arm rests in a sling, the weight of it too much for the stitches that reside in his shoulder.

The doctor that Tony had sworn to secrecy before allowing to tend to Bucky had been shocked at the weight of the arm, stating how much strain it must put on his spine and neck. Steve had to hum to himself to drown out Tony explaining the metal reinforcements in Bucky’s skeletal system to account for the extra weight. It didn’t totally help though, and Steve found himself itching to destroy a punching bag later.

Steve himself should have still been bedridden, his knee still in a tight brace. He had proclaimed the order void however, coercing Sam into tracking down a pair of crutches sturdy enough for Steve’s build, and tended to business as usual. Which means a team meeting. _Now_.

Maria Hill sits perched on one arm of the sofa, opposite Steve, face serious as ever and wearing a blouse embroidered with the Stark Industries logo, her cover intact. A meeting of this magnitude would usually require the dining room on the common floor, but the new glass windows there are being installed as they speak. Instead, they are gathered in the small living room of Steve’s apartment one floor below. It is a tight squeeze and there are not enough places to sit, but that is the least of their current worries.

“Where the hell do we start?” Steve asks. A glance around the room brings him a disheartening sight; first there is Bucky, feet drawn close to his body, blank expression on his face. Steve knows he won’t contribute anything to this conversation, has barely spoken in the last two days, but Steve refuses to leave him alone. He is right beside Steve now, close enough as they sit leaning against the wall that Steve can feel the heat radiating off his body. On Bucky’s other side is Wanda, the calmest presence to place beside him. She survived the attack mostly unscathed, wrangling the gas back out the windows from afar. Steve is glad she was able to keep her distance from the thick of the fighting. Vision is next, in the singular armchair, face as emotionless as ever but ready to focus and discuss the events that had occurred. The couch seats Tony, Rhodey, Clint and Natasha. It is really only made for three but Natasha has made Clint’s lap her seat in combination with the sofa arm. Steve is mentally preparing already for Tony’s ill-placed humor. Clint’s arm is in a sling still from the dislocation of his elbow, an injury not sustained from the fight but from Bucky. Pulling an assassin super soldier from a panic attack is risky business. Both his and Natasha’s faces are slates of calm, their training allowing calm facades no matter the situation. Natasha shows some wear and tear from the fight—a green and purple bruise on her jaw and a small cut above on eyebrow. Rhodey looks similarly, cuts and bruises showing on his face and arms. The War Machine suit had not been as readily available as Iron Man’s. His face is serious beneath a black eye, Sam’s too as he leans against the wall by the light switch. Rhodey is watching Tony and Sam is watching Steve, both eyeing the one they hold concern for. The most unscathed from the ambush is Thor, seated on the floor, broad shoulders leaning against Clint’s legs and facing Steve straight on. The childlike choice for his seat contrasted by his broad shoulders is almost disconcerting.

“How about we start with the _who_ ,” Agent Hill offers in answer to Steve’s question. “With the information you had provided and SHIELD intel, I was able to discern that there are few groups with the resources to incapacitate the tower in that way.”

“They took out the arc reactor with a piece of tech I had never even _seen_ ,” Tony tells them. Steve knows this, had talked to Tony at length while Bucky slept through his blood loss fatigue. It had taken everything Steve had to even look away from Bucky, but hearing what had happened to the tower, how the attack had even been possible, was the second most important thing on his mental list. “As far as I can tell from what I didn’t have to blow up to restore power, it use some sort of magnetic wave to fuck with the reactor. I still haven’t made heads nor tails of the thing, but I can tell you it was expensive to make.”

“Did you run any kind of forensics?” Clint asks. “Any traces of dirt or bacteria to tell us geographically where that thing has been?” The hardest part was that the enemy agents had all perished, killed by their own hand or committing suicide upon realizing they were going to be captured. The cyanide teeth were all too familiar to Steve, but other organizations had picked up the habit as a nod to Hydra. The true intent of the invasion was not even clear; had it been to kill? Capture? Steal intel?

“Squeaky clean,” Tony enlightens. “They treated that sucker to a wash better than my Ferrari’s.”

“They were well trained,” Natasha suddenly reflects. All eyes bounce to her. “I know I was surprised by their ability for hand-to-hand.” Steve nods, remembering the assailant who had not gone down as easily as he would have assumed. “I almost would say some could have been KGB but it wasn’t quite right, not how they taught me…” She glances at Bucky as she mentions the KGB but he is so far removed from the conversation, eyes miles away, that she need not worry about upsetting him.

“An elite squadron,” Thor supplies. “More gifted in battle than I find comfortable for siege upon this tower.”

“Do we have any diagnostics on the gas?” Steve asks.

“Normally Friday could have run a test while it was in the building but with the reactor out, she was unavailable,” Tony tells him. Steve begins to think perhaps they are _too_ reliant on technology.

“How did they incapacitate Friday?” Rhodey asks.

“A bug in the system, giving her blind spots completely. It looks like they targeted the Hulk floor,” Tony says. He has a StarkPad in front of him, ready to reference any data about the attack but he does not even need to look at the screen; he knows it all by heart. The attack perhaps hit closest to home for him—literally and figuratively.

“So they knew about Bucky,” Natasha says for all of them, the thought present but unspoken.

Agent Hill is the only one who responds. “Everything points to yes.”

“So it was a recovery mission?” Wanda asks. Bucky makes a sound, as though he were about to speak but changed his mind and cut off the words before they had even begun. Steve’s eyes snap to him, everything else aside. But Bucky is still staring off into nothing, eyes almost glazed over. Steve waits but nothing more happens. Everyone else waits for Steve.

“I think we must assume it was,” Thor says, finally pulling the focus from the most silent in the room. Steve grudgingly looks away from Bucky.

“And that was why Friday still couldn’t see Bucky’s floor later, but she didn’t even know because it was wiped from the database,” Vision clarifies.

“Like trying to tell someone there is a new number. It literally won’t make sense,” Tony explains.

Steve had already confronted Tony in regards to Bucky’s self harm. He had not been in a proper state of mind, sleep deprived and worried as he was, and had come at the genius with accusations and blame. Tony--bless him--had recognized the terror seizing Steve and taken the hit, the usual bite he had in response to anything personal smothered by his understanding of the situation.

As Steve meets Tony’s gaze now, he tries to communicate an apology for the confrontation.

“But the bug is out now?” Sam asks.

“Obliterated,” Tony assures. “I scoured the system and erased that parasite.”

“Fully functioning again,” Friday assures them. Up until now, Friday had refrained from speaking around Bucky, Steve unsure how he would react to the disembodied voice. The events following the tower’s attack had left him such a shell however that the disembodied words didn’t even cause him to blink. Steve was more than worried.

“So we have little to no starting point to investigate who came at us?” Clint asks. “Still square one.”

“What surprises me is that no one has attempted to claim responsibility for the attack,” Hill notes. “The entirety of the city saw the tower blink out and then the figures on the roof. Granted, it was night and a thunderstorm but with social media, the majority knew within the hour that an event had occurred at Avenger’s Tower. Even if a group was not responsible, I would expect terrorist organizations to attempt to claim the invasion as their own for their reputation.”

Silence follows the statement, no clear explanation in any of their minds for why such a move has not been taken by a single enemy group. Even when Tony had been involved with the Mandarin, other groups had attempted to lay claim to the events transpiring across the globe. Even when a solitary sniper had killed police in Texas and, once apprehended, stated that he worked alone, groups had tried to claim responsibility. So why not now?

No ideas come to mind, and eventually they move on. The next topic involves Steve reaching into the pocket of his hoodie and producing a medium sized knife.

“Whose is it?” Steve asks the group. Every pair of eyes focus on the knife, some recognizing it from when they last laid eyes on it when it was imbedded in the flesh of Bucky’s arm. Only Natasha knows the owner, her head slowly swiveling to Clint.

“I have no idea when Bucky took it,” he says. It is obvious by the bobbing of his Adam’s apple that Clint is nervous, experiencing dry mouth. Steve doesn’t think he has ever seen Clint visibly shaken like this with the exception of the hour following his recalibration from Loki’s mind control. Even in the stressful situations of their careers, even in the face of Ultron’s attempt at global extinction, he had kept his cool. “You sly spy,” Clint rhymes at Bucky. Steve doesn’t check the reaction it receives, knowing Bucky will simply still be staring at the far wall.

“Just make sure you have all of your… _things_ after being with Bucky,” Steve says, his voice so tired. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take, and that scares him. Everything is draining, every new piece of information and reiteration of what they know. Every retelling of the events and memory of the last few weeks. Bucky’s regression has smothered the hopeful flame that had sparked in Steve, and now he feels like a shell. He hates talking like Bucky isn’t in the room, wishes he would be a part of the conversations that center around him, but leaving him alone is not an option and little to nothing makes him speak after the events on Tuesday. Steve doesn’t know how to break him from this slump, how to bring back his friend that had slowly been assimilating to life in the tower.

A few more points are made, discussion of how to change security measures, how the enemy got to the roof and knew to take down Friday’s surveillance, and the usage of the gas that had obviously been ineffective to the team. If the assailants had enough information to fuck with Friday, then how did they not know the gas would be a mute point against Wanda and the biologically divergent members of the team?

When the meeting ends, Agent Hill is the first to leave the room, her investigations of the invasion far from over. Natasha is hot on her heels, her eyes having been glued to computer files and diagnostics for days now. The rest of them exit slowly, the entire mood of the team somber. Steve motions to Thor who helps him from the floor, yanking him up by the arms so that Steve does not have to lever himself with his bad knee. As he puts weight onto the toe, preparing to relocate himself to the couch via hobbling, he feels a shadow of pain in his knee. His threshold for pain is incredibly high, as proven by many Avenger’s missions, and his healing knee is currently no where close to the worst he has experienced. However, tears come unbidden to his eyes, gathering in the corners, and Steve hurriedly blinks them away.

“You know Tony can whip up some fancy painkillers to work with your metabolism, right?” Sam asks, the only one in the slowly emptying room to notice Steve’s dampening eyes.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt,” Steve tells him. Sam looks unconvinced. Steve can also feel Bucky’s gaze trained on him, the only focus he currently can hold being on Steve’s own well being and healing. It is disconcerting for Steve to watch him be unable to tend to himself but care so viciously for Steve, the missing self-preservation a sign of how his mind has changed. Steve knew a Bucky who would fight tooth and nail for him, but would pour peroxide over his own cuts as well as Steve’s after the fact. This Bucky never thinks of himself as someone who needs care.

Steve isn’t sure how to even tell Sam or Bucky why he keeps tearing up at inopportune moments. The truth is that every time he is forced to remember his healing leg, he is forced to remember how it got hurt. His heart had ripped itself to shreds in that elevator shaft as he worried for Bucky, and his battered knee is a constant reminder of how the Winter Soldier had resurfaced. The slight pain in his knee was nothing compared to the pain it ignited in his heart. The physical reminder of the terrifying events only fueled his emotional response, hence the unbidden tears.

“Just let us know if you need anything,” Sam tells Steve earnestly. “That goes for you too Friday because Steve doesn’t know how to not be a damn martyr.”

“As you wish, Mr. Wilson,” Friday responds. This time, Bucky at least starts when the disembodied voice speaks, a visible flinch twitching his shoulders.

Sam is the last to leave Steve’s apartment, two super soldiers stood in the middle of the living room in his wake. As much as Steve desperately wants to help with the investigation of the invasion, the fastest way for Bucky and him to heal is to sleep, their super soldier DNA able to knit tissue back together much faster if the rest of them isn’t functioning. Naps have been in abundance as of late.

“Bed or couch?” Steve asks. It isn’t even a question that they will rest together, Bucky’s nightmares worse than ever unless he is within Steve’s embrace. The latter experiences high anxiety whenever he is away from Bucky, so the arrangement is working in both their favors.

“Bed,” Bucky murmurs. They are a motley duo between Bucky’s arm sling and Steve’s leg brace, one hobbling while the other shuffles behind.

 

"Barton, I have questions for you." It is after dinner and the kitchen is dimly lit by the setting sun, the tower blocked from the rays by tall westward buildings. Steve is striding briskly in and the piece of cold pizza halfway to Clint’s mouth pauses. The serious look on Steve’s face makes him put it back down.

"What's up Cap?"

Steve settles himself in the seat beside Clint at the dining table, glancing at the StarkPad propped against the heavy marble vase no one has ever put flowers in. It shows a surveillance video from the tower, Clint conducting research into the invasion even over his pathetic dinner.

"You said Fury helped you set up your safe house, right?"

"You want a safe house." It's not a question.

"I need a place to take Bucky. After the attack... I just don't think this is a healthy place for him to be anymore." Steve leaves out the part where he doesn’t know if it is _safe_.

"Definitely could see these walls being an issue now," Clint agrees. "A lot of bad memories are stored here for him after the other night."

"I need your help because I'm not sure how to go about finding a place and also I can't let Fury know why I want a safe house."

"Not comfortable with him knowing about Bucky? Does Hill know that?" Clint looks worried, like he thinks their coordinator has not been informed.

"Of course, she was debriefed on the entire situation before she was even made aware of the attack."

Clint nods. "The SHIELD system has a list of properties currently on the market that meet SHIELD standards. It's updated pretty regularly. We can check it out whenever you have a minute away from Barnes. Where is he right now anyways?"

"Wanda is with him. She still calms him, even after… everything." Steve tries to swallow past the small lump that forms in his throat.

"Well, I’m sparring with Nat in about fifteen minutes, but we can look together tomorrow. How does that sound?”

Clint’s gentle tone catches Steve off guard, too used to dry humor from the archer. Steve doesn’t show it though, a feat for him, and simply nods.

“And let Bucky know I am up for more Pixar movies whenever he is.”

“I’ll tell him.” There is almost a smile on Steve’s face.

He sets to making himself a cup of coffee then, a night’s sleep always less rejuvenating than he would hope. His nightmares are still present, waking him often and sometimes so entrancing that Steve does not wake on his own.

Steve thinks that his own nightmares cannot be helpful to Bucky, waking to the person who is supposed to comfort _him_ being the one screaming, but quite the opposite may have proven itself true. Whenever Steve’s dreams become the vivid terrors, Bucky shakes him awake by the shoulder, sometimes gripping Steve’s face in his experienced hands, the shock of the temperature difference between them a sensation that helps ground Steve to the moment.

Even if Bucky can help wake Steve and remind him of the present, it still doesn’t mean Steve always goes back to sleep however. Steve always stays in bed though: he is Bucky’s own security blanket. Since the new sleeping arrangement, Bucky has not experienced a nightmare. Much to Steve’s chagrin, they had discovered Steve to be the one who warded them off. So now, he stayed for as long as Bucky slept, wide awake and listening to his deep breaths.

As soon as Clint begins to gather his dishes and depart from the kitchen, Steve does as well. He pretends to miss the knowing look Barton bears as Steve hurries to the elevator to return to Bucky, anxious to make sure he is okay. This is the longest Steve has left him for since the attack on the tower.

 

The morning after talking to Clint, Steve and him settle onto the couch in Steve’s apartment to look at safe houses. Bucky is in the single armchair, a blanket burritoed around him as he watches _Friends_. Steve himself gets cold sometimes in the tower, all the modern furniture, cement floors, and high ceilings making for a sometimes chill environment—as well as Steve’s own habit of feeling inexplicably cold ever since waking in the 21st century—but Bucky is a completely different level of perceived cold. Steve has never asked, but he assumes it stems from Bucky’s time in cryofreeze. It is one of the few assumptions Steve can make from the Hydra files Natasha gave him all those months ago.

Clint has a SHIELD issued laptop balanced on his knees and the list of approved safe houses on the screen. They then proceed to spend the better part of two hours analyzing the pages of information and pictures of each. It is a tedious process, the landscapes significantly different as few are in the same state as another. It is hard to know exactly what kind of surrounding land will trigger Bucky, but Steve is able to rule out some that seem too confined. He discovers that his mind has a clear line between the houses he sees as nestled into the landscape and the ones that are trapped.

Clint reminds Steve that he doesn’t have to purchase a SHIELD approved safe house, that he could find one on his own online, but Steve insists that one of these must work. Besides, he doesn’t understand the general Internet well enough to use realtor websites, even if he can navigate the SHIELD system and Amazon Prime like a professional.

In the end, there is a short list of four homes that Steve thinks might be suitable. With Steve’s stipulations about the floor plan (“too closed off, Bucky can’t feel caged”) and the landscape (“too much underbrush, too many hiding places”) it is difficult to find any properties that are suitable. One of the selected properties is a modern cabin in central Wisconsin, one side of the property along a lakeshore and the forest a significant distance from the structure of the actual house on the other three. The second is in Virginia, rolling green all around and a large oak tree in the front lawn. The third is a cottage in South Dakota in the Black Hills, pine forest surrounding the area but the house itself situated between a steep cliff side and a large pond fed by rain runoff. The fourth is in Nevada, red dirt for miles around.

“Want to think and get back to me later?” Clint asks. Steve knows that he knows Steve won’t make up his mind today, and Steve is thankful for having a friend like Clint.

“Yeah, I’ll let you know. Have to come up with my excuse for Fury too though.”

“If he questions why you need a place, just remind him of what happened with Ultron. Say some bullshit about bothering my family, tug on those heartstrings that made him help me hide them.” The smile in Clint’s voice is all too evident, his textured voice joking but Steve only focuses on one part of the explanation.

Brow furrowed, he asks “Did we bother them? They weren’t in danger, right?” Steve isn’t sure how aware he really was when they had hidden at Clint’s farm, the effects of Wanda’s vision and his own disheartening moment of seeing the domestic life he had always wanted but would never have throwing him for a loop. His headspace had simultaneously been stuck seventy years in the past and in an impossible future. The fight with Tony hadn’t helped, Steve still remember the splinters he had to pick from the pads of his fingers after ripping the firewood with his hands. Overall, it had not been a good day.

“Oh no, my kids still talk about it daily. Plus you gave my wife an excuse to play hostess, she always fantasized about having a Norse god and patriotic icon in her home.”

“Are you excited to see them this weekend?” Steve asks. Clint had been talking about going home after the attack, moments of such panic and survival always making him want to see his family.

“Of course, been away a couple weeks and it already feels like forever. We will make a decision when I get back, yeah?”

 

Steve spends the next few days with Bucky, the tone completely different from before the attack on the tower despite the mundane activities being the same. Training with the new recruits is completely on hold however, injuries needing time to heal. All of the extra time leaves a lot of silent spans between Steve and Bucky.

Despite the lack of vocalization from Bucky, he is still functioning at the same level. The regress seems to be in his… humanization. Spending time with others is not spooking him, just occasionally upsetting. He is simply quiet despite still knowing how to use the coffee maker, picking clothes for himself out of Steve’s large closet, and watching Steve-approved TV and movies.

Because of this, Steve does not cut back on the amount of time they spend with the others in the tower. Wanda enjoys the animated movies perhaps more than either super soldier and they move on to watching the older Disney classics.

Bucky is just selecting _Tarzan_ from the Netflix queue when Wanda knocks and lets herself into Steve’s apartment, settling into her customary spot on the other end of the sofa from Steve. “I’m so excited for this one,” she tells them. “I heard the soundtrack is really good.”

From what Steve has experienced with Disney so far, he wouldn’t doubt it.

“It’s boiling in here,” Wanda whispers across to Steve. They both know why, because Steve keeps his thermostat at a ridiculously high temperature for Bucky’s (and his) comfort. When he had done some research, the way they both live in bodies of extreme temperature sensitivity sounded like frostbite. People reported the frostbitten appendages never taking to cold as well. Perhaps his whole body had been frostbitten when he went down in the Valkyrie.

Bucky settles between them after figuring out how to send the Netflix screen from the StarkPad app to the TV and immediately pulls the fleece blanket hung over the back of the sofa down to cover his legs.

Steve feels like he spends more time during movies watching his friends than the actual film. In the first ten minutes, Wanda cries and Steve keeps half an eye on her, wondering if the this wasn’t a good choice considering the fact that two of the three of them lost their parents too early, but then the mood picks up with the energetic soundtrack. Steve watches Bucky as his eyes focus on the screen and this is something Steve has noticed as well: Bucky is definitely watching the movies now, whereas before Steve wasn’t always sure.

Part way through, Bucky ends up slouching more, face pressed against Steve’s shoulder and feet tucked on the couch cushion between Wanda and him. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Wanda tuck his bare feet under the corner of the blanket and he smiles to himself.

When it gets closer to dinner time, Jarvis informs them that Tony is ordering Thai for everyone and asks if anyone has a specific order. Steve and Wanda have learned by now to just let Tony order one of everything like he wants to and they will all fight over portions later.

After Tarzan is over, Steve heads to the kitchen, Bucky by his side, to lay claim to their food. Besides Natasha, they are the first to arrive at the communal kitchen. She seems lost in thought, gathering a plate of food for the takeout containers without acknowledging their entrance.

Steve walks along and explains to Bucky what the contents of each white paper container is. He just gazes at them without comment. Bucky carefully spoons portions of anything Steve notes as not spicy; his stomach still can’t handle any food with more than average flavor. If the research Steve had done when Bucky first opened up about his eating habits is true, then he may never be able to handle anything more than that.

Avoiding the dining table as per usual, the four of them settle onto the sofas. Thor enters as they do, heaping a plate with a little of everything, before joining them too. _Wheel of Fortune_ plays on the TV, the communal living room somehow always left on The Game Show Network. Steve honestly isn’t even sure who actually _likes_ watching it. It’s almost like Friday has been turning it to that channel for years and now they are all simply in the habit.

Steve can feel Natasha’s eyes on him however, a calm focus that causes the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle. When he turns to meet her gaze, she is communicating with her eyebrows. She has something to tell him.

It is as Steve is putting Bucky’s and his plates into the dishwasher that she voices her thoughts. “I have a lead.”

Steve abandons his rearrangement of the top rack to give her his full attention. “What? Who is it? Where they trying to take Bucky?” he gushes in an undertone. He takes a glance towards the living room, but Bucky is still seated beside Wanda watching _Who Wants to be a Millionaire_ , seemingly oblivious to the conversation in the kitchen.

“I don’t have a name of the group,” Nat begins, “but I do have their legend.”

“Legend?”

“Anyone credible doesn’t believe they exist.” There is a pregnant pause.

“A ghost story…” Steve finally elaborates, glancing at Bucky again. “But if experience has anything to say, they are very real.”

“Exactly my conclusion.”

“But what did they want?”

“That is the mystery, but they have Hydra connections. If the lore is true, they’ve always targeted similar operations and had similar agendas.”

“But how can we even find out more without a name.”

“We are trying to catch a ghost, but everyone who has ever thought their house to be haunted just ended up having creaky pipes.” Natasha follows the statement up with a shrug like punctuation. “We’ll find them, I just don’t know if it will be sooner rather than later.”

“Make it sooner.” Natasha almost smiles at the calm authority in Steve’s voice. He is starting to sound like Captain America.

 

That night as Steve and Bucky brush their teeth side-by-side, Bucky rinses his mouth and then sits heavily on the edge of the bathtub.

“Buck, you okay?” Steve asks around his toothbrush as he scrubs his molars.

“Keres.”

The toothbrush pauses. “What is Keres?”

“What Natasha found.”

Steve’s brain goes into overdrive, but he tries to focus, calm it to just one thought or question. He does not know how long Bucky is going to be vocal for, but he needs to get as much information as possible before the silence is back. Steve also subconsciously realizes that Bucky _has_ been listening all along. And his hearing is as good as Steve’s if he heard Natasha and him in the kitchen.

“That’s the name of the organization responsible for the attack?” Bucky nods. “How do you know?”

“The Hydra supreme. No one was supposed to know.”

“Hydra is a front?”

“The operational decoy.” Bucky says it like he is quoting someone verbatim.

“What does Keres do?”

“Everything.”

Steve leans heavily onto the vanity. If he could lower himself to the floor with his knee in the damn brace he would have. Everything suddenly feels light years away.

Later, Bucky falls asleep on the left side of the bed, deathly still save for the pedantic rise and fall if his chest. The room is all negatives, the color leeched by the full moon and nighttime city beyond the windows. Steve settles in beside Bucky, head on his shoulder and arm across his middle.

Steve knows damn well that the Internet will not tell him anything about the terrorist organization, but he does not even know what the title means. When he Googles “Keres”, Wikipedia informs him that it is a female death spirit of Greek mythology. He locks his phone with a sharp inhale. He gazes at Bucky, the latter’s face devoid of tension or misery in sleep. The room darkens as a cloud covers the moon.

 

“Bucky,” Steve starts, carefully addressing him over the coffee table. Bucky is on the sofa, picking at a bagel but Steve knows he won’t eat. Steve is seated on the floor, his leg stretched to the side with the brace bracketing his knee. With the fact that he can’t bend it, the floor is usually the only place he can sit comfortably.

Bucky glances up, fleetingly makes eye contact, and looks back at the bagel.

“Buck, I have to ask you a question.” He doesn’t receive any sort of confirmation, but plows on nonetheless. This is important. “When the tower was attacked,” Steve starts, watching Bucky carefully for signs of anxiety. He seems to be doing fine for now. “When you were… brainwashed again, how did that happen?”

Steve is met with silence. He didn’t really expect something different, but he had hoped. He waits. One, two, three, four, five seconds. “Can they still… control you?”

Bucky’s eyes dart up to look Steve in the face. It is the first direct eye contact Bucky has made since the incident. He holds it steady. “No.”

Steve waits in case there will be more, but Bucky offers nothing.

 

Clint returns the next morning, his mood considerably lighter after spending time with his family. He joyously delivers hugs to the room, clapping Steve on the back like a fraternity brother before quickly whispering in his ear. “Made a decision?”

“South Dakota,” Steve tells him. He feels Clint nod before releasing him from the embrace.

Later, Steve snags Natasha and pulls her into a corner, away from the others as they devour the five gallon tub of ice cream Tony had delivered from his favorite parlor in Manhattan.

“Hate to ruin the good mood,” he tells her, eyes focused on Bucky curled on one end of the couch beside Sam, “but I have a lead.”

“If it’s going to ruin the mood, then I take it we are in deep.”

“Hella.” Natasha smiled, always proud when he picked up a modern figure of speech. “Bucky told me about something called Keres. Ever heard of it?”

Natasha cocks her head. “I haven’t… I heard that name so many years ago… Mentioned by KGB handlers. They were talking about intelligence gossip… rumors… I wasn’t supposed to be within ear shot.”

“It’s real. Or at least Bucky was lead to believe they are. I don’t know if he has had encounters or just knows of. He was not very forthcoming with the information.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“They’re a Hydra upper apparently, Hydra covers them. I’m not sure what Keres even does, he didn’t really say. Ask Friday for the audio, so you can hear verbatim.”

Natasha nods, affirming it as a good idea, and absentmindedly sets down her ice cream bowl, preoccupied now. She leaves the room, motioning for Clint to follow. He does so like a trained dog, backtracking her path with his eyes to spot Steve leaning against the wall. He knits his brow in confusion as they reach the elevator.

 

The next day, Clint and Steve settle onto the couch in Steve’s apartment, Bucky tucked into Steve’s side like a very large cat. Like a tiger that thinks it’s a housecat. Bucky had been incredibly tactile, sticking close to Steve’s side all morning. The only explanation Steve can think of is the restless sleep Bucky had experienced, rolling and repositioning more than usual. In fact, ever since his nightmares stopped, he has been a dead sleeper, rooted to one spot. Steve would be concerned about the change, except that Bucky does not seem upset, simply touch starved.

“Okay, log into the database. It won’t raise any red flags for your log in to come from my computer, they all know we are at the tower together,” Clint tells Steve, passing over the computer.

Steve messes up his mile long password on the first try, the way Bucky is against his shoulder making typing difficult. Clint lets out a chuckle.

Clint then walks him through the process of purchasing the property through SHIELD, filling out the proper information to select which of his identities it will be under. Steve pretends he doesn’t see how Clint automatically scrolls down, expecting more than the two fake identities that Steve has been assigned. Idly, he wonders how many Barton has, how many pages of social security numbers and details of life he has memorized.

“Okay, SHIELD will line up a phone for your identity, they always send them right away so it will arrive later,” Clint tells him. “A SHIELD exec will pretend they are your real estate agent and foreclose on the house, you’ll get a call on the cell phone then. They move things pretty quickly, especially since we aren’t trying to haggle the price, so you’ll probably be able to head out there before the week is out. Just depends on how quickly the current owner’s agent gets back to SHIELD.”

Steve nods, taking in all the information. By his side, Bucky is perking up.

“How you feel about South Dakota?” Steve asks him. Bucky doesn’t respond.

 

Steve can’t remember ever being in a quinjet that felt so cramped, but perhaps that is because of the used pickup truck strapped in the equipment bay. It leaves no room for the seats along those walls to be flipped down so Bucky and Steve are both cramped near the front in the few seats directly behind Tony as he pilots the aircraft.

“I still can’t believe you are coming out with us,” Steve says. He has spent the last three days trying to convince Tony it is unnecessary, but the man isn’t listening to any of it.

“You really think you can set up the security system _and_ the sound system for the TV by yourself?” Tony asks rhetorically. “You need me Rogers, admit it.”

“I refuse,” Steve teases, glancing at Bucky. There is a spark in his eyes now, one that has been present for the last few days as he became aware of their impending move. Steve’s unsure what exactly is the cause—leaving the tower, leaving New York as a whole, living somewhere else, or a factor he can’t fathom—but he is gloriously happy to see it there all the same.

“Glinda is going to be there over the weekend, right?” Tony asks. It was his new nickname for Wanda, the “Good Witch”. Steve is unsure how she feels about it but no disapproval has made itself known.

“Yup, staying with Buck while we recon that base in Belgrade,” Steve elaborates. “Hopefully it’s a lead.”

The entire team was now on the same page about Keres, every brain picking away at intel to discover who and what they were exactly. The only tip they had found was in the Hydra files Nat had leaked to the Internet, their contents so much organizational jargon that whole sentences were illegible but there was enough about this building in Serbia, and an account of the defenses and security it was surrounded by, to make them curious of a bigger picture.

The plane lapses into silence for several hours then. Steve reclines his head, listening to the rock music Tony has leaking from the quinjet speakers. Bucky reads, devouring a book Wanda had recommended, something called _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. Steve notices the different noise depending on if Bucky turns the page with his flesh or metal hand. One is a familiar rasp and the other a smooth slither. He focuses on the sounds and finds himself drifting to sleep.

When they land, it is in a small private airport in Rapid City. As Tony signs some paperwork to leave the plane in the hanger for two days, Steve notices him stick a bug to the back of the office computer.

When they get outside and clamber into the pick up, Steve opens his mouth to ask.

Tony beats him to it. “No records of the plane will last, Friday took care of it. No one will know we were here but the guy who was working. And he’s been bribed. Don’t worry. And I know his name and issued threats. Plus our disguises. It’ll be fine Cap.”

Steve nods, satisfied, and tosses the few suitcases and duffels they have into the truck bed before moving to the driver’s door. Bucky takes shot gun and Tony hops into the backseat. The truck engine rumbles to life and they pull away from the quinjet in the hangar bay and out to the slim road.

It takes a little under an hour to reach the house. It is tucked into the hillside outside of the city of Custer. Technically, it is in the Black Hills National Forest, well outside city limits and near one edge of the state park (Steve is still holding out hope for seeing some of the wildlife though). It is a long, weaving gravel driveway through the pine forest before they finally come upon the structure. It is just one long rectangle, garage the same width as the rest of the house. The trees recede here, a safe distance from the structure where it was built into the rockier ground by the cliff’s edge. The Blackhills are full of jagged rock protrusions like this, full of mineral deposits and sometimes small flakes of gold. The cliff sparkles in the evening sun, a stellar site. Past the house, a corner of the pond is visible.

“Home sweet home,” Steve muses as he pulls up to the garage door.  They exit the vehicle on the gravel drive and walk around to the front side, stepping up onto the small porch while Steve digs the key from his pocket. He had asked for it to be mailed to his new P.O. box in New York, set up under his false name. The real estate agent had thought it strange but Steve had been able to assure her that he didn’t mind venturing out to the home for the first time on his own, or the fact that he hadn’t seen the property in person before purchasing it.

Technically, he now owned eighteen acres of South Dakota forest. What a life it was.

Tony sets to work on the security system immediately, a huge metal case full of the necessities open in the middle of the empty living room. Steve watches for a bit, but the words flowing from Tony’s mouth as he explains his actions are starting to give Steve a headache.

“I am going grocery shopping,” Steve finally decides. They still have two hours before the furniture truck arrives, a delivery of the pieces Steve had purchased online. The delivery fee itself had been handsome to drive it all to a location so rural but it wasn’t like Steve’s seventy years of military back pay could not easily handle it. “Buck,” Steve asks, now directly addressing his friend seated on the floor against the wall, watching Tony. “You okay with that?”

Bucky’s eyes slowly meet his and give a jerky nod. It is not as affirming as Steve would like but they also need to have food for dinner so he hands Bucky the burner phone bought for him, shows him how to call Steve if he needs it, and heads back out to the truck.

The drive to town is a little over twenty minutes and grocery shopping—even on the best day when Steve can focus and is not worrying about Bucky—is rather overwhelming for him. He misses the days when there were not multiple brands to choose from. Steve returns to the house just before the furniture truck, quite literally closing the refrigerator door after depositing the last item when they hear it pull up.

“Tony, you haven’t done the motion detectors out back yet, right?” Steve asks. They had discussed this on the way, the fact that Bucky would need to be out of the house while the workers brought in the furniture. Steve fully intended to ask them to simply dump everything down, he could easily move it all himself later, but all the same they knew it would be overwhelming for Bucky to be in the same room as so much activity.

“Nope, let’s go Bourne,” Tony says, waving Bucky over while he grabs the tools and wiring he will need for the backyard. Steve is thankful for Tony coming along, as much as he pretends he won’t admit it. He isn’t sure how this would be possible without him.

Just as the sliding patio door slips shut behind them, their footsteps sounding on the wooden back porch, Steve hears the delivery men knock. He musters a normal expression and moves to answer it.

It takes longer than Steve wanted, but the furniture is all inside, some still in the protective wrappings for shipping and some even in boxes (assembly required) within an hour. Steve tips the two men generously, even if he did move more furniture inside than either of them did, and thanks them as they climb back into the yellow truck.

Tony had left a portable speaker in the kitchen so that Steve could talk to Friday while Tony and his suit were acres away at the back of the property. Now, he hails them back with it.

“Finally, your security system has been operational for twenty minutes already,” Tony pretends to complain. Steve isn’t going to try to understand how Stark was able to install everything that quickly.

Back inside, Tony sets to work on the entertainment system while Steve and Bucky move the furniture into the proper rooms. Bucky’s eyebrows knit and mouth bends into a gentle frown when he sees the two mattresses and two box springs leaning against one wall. Steve sidles over, knowing what is going on in Bucky’s head.

“One is for the guest room,” Steve tells him, gently moving a hand to grip his elbow in reassurance. “Don’t worry.”

Steve and Bucky can both lift furniture pieces on their own, so the hardest part of organizing their home is simply figuring out where to put things. It is a small space, so they really haven’t bought that much but no one has a knack for arranging the furniture. Tony is unhelpful as he simply keeps repeating that they should have let him hire Pepper’s interior designer. Steve scoffs.

“Tony, I grew up during the great depression.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a well decorated room.”

By dinner, the small dining table has been bolted together, the chairs are unwrapped, and the bedrooms are ready to go. Steve figures the rest can wait for tomorrow, it’s not like they need end tables and Steve’s small desk at this exact moment, so they dig into the frozen pizzas the oven had almost burned. Tony then gives both of them an extensive lesson on how to operate all of the devices he has hooked up to the TV. There is a way to stream Netflix from the StarkPads, a DVD player, a Bluray player, and even a way for them to tap into the feeds from the security cameras or view a display of the activity around the motion sensors outside.

“The sensors are geared for anything big,” Tony tells them. “So don’t worry about birds and squirrels setting them off. A bear could, but I figure if there _is_ a bear, you’d want to know anyways just to see it.” Steve agrees.

Tony then shows them what to select to perform a perimeter check. Steve sees Bucky’s eyes positively _glow_ at this, earnestly watching as the screen displays the view of every camera around the house, the readings of every motion sensor, and then updates on where heartbeats are located on the premise.

“And here’s the coolest part,” Tony says. “It calls the tower. So if it senses something big outside and you go to check, it knows where your heartbeat is and will see that. There is an entire algorithm worked into the system so that if it is a threat and not a bear, all of us know and will be on our way ASAP.”

“Can you see it from the tower?” Bucky asks. Steve thinks it is the most words he has heard Bucky say in a row in a week.

“No, only the alerts should something be wrong.”

Steve watches Bucky gently nod to himself and wonders about the nature of that question.

After the tutorial, Steve makes the beds, swearing under his breath at the stubborn fitted sheets, as Tony and Bucky settle onto the sofa. Tony is adamantly talking about some show called _Bob’s Burgers_ , his voice easily carrying to Steve in the guest bedroom. He likes the size of the cottage, the fact that he could be at Bucky’s side at a moment’s notice but there were enough rooms for privacy.

Bucky only made it through two episodes of Tony’s show before he was dozing, head fallen back to rest against the sofa and mouth gently hanging open. Steve was impressed he felt comfortable enough to sleep while Tony occupied the other end of the long sofa.

When the episode ends, Tony turns of the entertainment center, casting a glance over at Bucky. “Nose goes for carrying him to bed,” he jokes, quickly moving his forefinger to touch the tip of his nose. Steve has seen Natasha and Clint do this on occasion, over things like washing dishes and mission paperwork but he has never understood it.

In the end, Steve sleeps in the armchair beside the sofa while Tony retires to the guest room. One thing Steve is very unsure of is what would happen should he wake Bucky, as he has never physically had to do so. Carrying him to bed just seems like a bad idea, so he decided to sleep nearby instead of moving the sleeping man. When Bucky whimpers, night shadows creeping into his mind as he rests, Steve awakens easily and grips his hand, a calm reassurance to Bucky’s subconscious. The noises cease.

 

Around four, Steve wakes with the uneasy sense that someone is watching him. There is a moment in which Steve’s heart rate accelerates and his muscles tense, before he relaxes back into the chair. Bucky is sitting on the edge of the sofa, peering at Steve, a pillow clutched to his chest.

“It was the lights,” he says quietly and suddenly Steve is awake, straightening his spine and pushing his feet flat to the floor.

“What was the lights?”

“When they went out. That’s the last thing I can remember before… the elevator.”

Steve immediately knows exactly what Bucky is talking about. “The lights triggered…him?” Steve has never voiced Bucky’s assassin alias to Bucky himself and doesn’t know if it is a good idea too.

“I didn’t expect it.” Steve can barely hear the words. “The surprise…”

It is silent in the living room, the only sound carrying from the kitchen as the old refrigerator hums. After a full minute has passed, Bucky stands and moves towards the bedroom.

At the door, he turns and looks expectantly at Steve who hefts his body from the arm chair and follows after to tuck themselves into a real bed.

 

Steve’s shield pings off the wall and sweeps across the room to knock the line of Hydra agents to the floor like bowling pins. Several are knocked unconscious but two are moving to return to their feet, shaking their heads as stars appear in their vision from the impact. Steve raises his hand, catching his shield as the arm piece calls it back, and leaps forwards to flip and knock a foot into the closer one’s head. As he goes down, Steve smacks the edge of his shield against the other one’s temple. They are out cold before they touch the cold cement.

“Sublevel four is clear,” Steve says, pressing his earpiece. “Status reports.”

“Working on five,” Natasha responds, voice clear in his ear despite whatever physical altercation she is undoubtedly in.

“Approaching sublevel six,” Rhodey answers too.

Steve ties each agent to a desk or the pipes along the walls before rifling through the desks in the room. He only finds basic operational paperwork, logs of the daily base activities but nothing incriminating. The evidence of Hydra’s more sadistic practices must be lower, along with any intel on Keres. “Headed to sublevel seven,” Steve says as he opens a desk drawer to find it empty of but a pen. “Nothing helpful here.”

Steve takes the steps two at a time in the dark stairwell, thankful for his perfect vision as he hurries down them. He bypasses two floors--he knows that as long as Natasha and Rhodey were capable of status reports that they're handling the fights perfectly fine--and halts outside the door to the seventh.

Listening carefully, he can't pick up any voices or footsteps. Slipping to the side of the door, he nudges it open and peaks through the gap.

There is a long hallway, singular doors leading off of it until the very end where it dead ends at large, metal, double doors with square windows. Even from this distance, Steve can spot the metal wiring running through it: bullet proof.

The first door Steve tries is locked. He gently taps his fingers against it, testing the painted material. Metal. He had hoped for wood he could simply break down.

The shield’s edge comes down on the doorknob, denting in the fixture between knob and door. Steve repeats this and the doorknob falls off, the door swinging open now that the lock can’t keep its hold.

Inside, it is recognizably a holding cell. Or at least Steve assumes that would be the only use for a small, square room with cuffs attached to the cinder blocks and a small drain in the middle of the floor. This floor is for prisoners.

“Possible prisoners on sublevel seven,” Steve radios in.

“Well shit,” Rhodey says, the noise of his shoulder gun moving clear in the earpiece.

“Keep updating,” Natasha instructs.

With a new determination, Steve checks every single cell leading to the double doors. Thankfully, no one is found and Steve lets the other two know. Now, he faces the double doors, the last enigma of floor.

The lock is on the outside and Steve easily lifts the metal bar across the door latches with one hand, setting it to the side. The doors whine as he opens them, in need of some WD-40. It has been some time since this room was used.

It is dark inside and Steve fumbles for a light switch. What he does find is a lever half the length of his forearm. He pulls and the shadowy space is illuminated so brightly it becomes devoid of depth.

It holds no mysteries to Steve. He knows _exactly_ what this room was used for.

The mechanical chair is centered--like a spectacle--with the infernal headpiece above it. Sam and Steve came across these in the early days of their search for Bucky, bases that had been used as reprogramming sites. The very first had been where they found the “reset” instructions and Steve had beaten the chair there to a pile of scrap metal.

“Sublevel five is clear,” Natasha’s voice suddenly rings in his ear. “Steve, find anyone down there?”

It takes Steve several minutes to find his voice, and another to realize he has fallen heavily to his knees.

“Negative, everything was empty.” Steve thinks he might be talking about more than just the cells. His heart feels like a cavern, faced with a reminder he had not been expecting. It has been months since he saw the tangible reminder of what happened to his Bucky. He might be imagining it but his vision seems fuzzy at the edges, like a softly focused camera. But this is no sight worth saving.

“Steve?” Nat questions. She must have heard something in his tone of voice.

“Take level eight,” he tells her. “I’ll be there soon.” Eight is the lowest level, or at least the last one represented by the elevator buttons. They had only used it to enter the sublevels, the risk of ambush as the door pinged open too great.

“Are you at the end of the hall?”

“Take level eight,” Steve instructs her again, heaving himself off the floor to move towards the crates along the walls. He will search for information and leave as quickly as he can. He can do this.

Suddenly, Natasha isn’t talking in his ear anymore but from behind him. “Steve,  
I can search the room.”

Steve is silent as he stares at the crates, the prospects of finding another “operation manual” or journals of “the assets upkeep” at the base too great an obstacle for him.

“Okay,” he breathes, turning to face Nat. “I’ve got eight.” He drags his feet towards the door, past Natasha. She grabs his arm just above the elbow, issuing a gentle squeeze. Steve takes in a long, deep breath. His shoulders rise like he is inflating, vigor flowing back into his muscles. His eyes clear as he looks back into the hall, ready.

The agents on sublevel eight never stood a chance. 

Later, leaving the Moroccan coast near Casablanca, Steve’s mind returns to the reset chair. Even with two of his comrades around him and a cargo bay full of restrained Hydra uppers, he cannot forget its reappearance. The thoughts carry him to a shadowed alcove of his mind, one that is incapable of keeping his gaze from the windows. Between the self inflicted stressor of his mind and the ever present Atlantic Ocean below, his skin prickles with nervous beads of sweat and his lungs stutter, unable to acquire the deepest of reprieves. It is a long flight as Steve grips his hands to one another tightly in his lap.

 

“Buck?” Steve calls out to the cottage. “Did you order something?” The Amazon Prime box is nondescript but Steve can’t imagine what Bucky ordered, nor how he learned to use Amazon Prime. The name on the box is Steve’s alias, but he knows he didn’t place any orders recently. He considers throwing it against the rocks outside, to detonate any sort of bomb that could be inside, but he calms himself first. There must be an explanation for this.

There is the sound of blankets shifting and Bucky appears from their bedroom. Even though it is midmorning, Bucky has been relaxing in the bed, body drained after staying awake until the wee hours of the morning waiting for Steve’ return from a mission on a lakeside in Turkey.

As Bucky takes the package from Steve, he gently inquires about Bucky’s newly acquired Internet skills.

“Tony,” is the answer Steve gets and _of course_ it was Tony that showed Bucky Amazon Prime, he should have known.

“What did you get?” Steve asks conversationally.

“Hammock.”

The afternoon is spent with the Eno hammock suspended between two trees alongside the pond. Steve flits in and out, finishing his mission report, Skyping with Natasha after she interrogated the Turkish facility head, and making their meals. Bucky remains outside, the calmest Steve has perhaps ever seen him, as he soaks up the early autumn sunlight and reads one of Steve’s novels.

Soon, the hammock becomes the number one place to find Bucky. If there is sunshine outside, there is a Bucky in the hammock. The ventilation in the tower is amazing, Tony literally had the best air system (mostly because he had allergies and was a baby about it more so than for real health reasons but still) but being outside, here in the north, was different than anything New York could have provided Bucky. Sitting outside on the patio doing the crossword, Steve watches Bucky, watches him breath deeply and observe the comings and goings of the birds to the pond; Watches him nap in the sunlight and read with sunglasses on because the rays are so bright they refract off the white pages; Watches him slowly become something more.

The change is most apparent when Steve has been away on a mission, even just a few days of absence making the difference more noticeable. Everytime he comes home—from Norway, from Morocco, from Tibet, from Yuma in Arizona, from Columbia—Steve can tell Bucky is a little better.

The others notice too. They take turns staying at the cottage with Bucky instead of going on the missions. It is a comfortable set up, although Bucky does experience bad dreams when Steve is not there in bed with him. This knowledge eats at Steve’s conscious, makes the gentle goodbyes as the quinjet arrives to lift him away all the harder. But the missions are to protect Bucky, to keep Keres from ever touching him again. As Steve has to force himself to not look out the plane’s window as they cross the Pacific, as he nearly loses the contents of his stomach at the sight of another reset chair in a facility in the Andes Mountains, as he embraces Bucky in the morning light of the kitchen and whispers a good bye into the side of his neck, Steve reminds himself that it is to protect Bucky. And that makes all the difference.

The silver lining is seeing the progression Bucky has made. It is little in the grand scheme of things, but slow progress is still progress. There are still times when Bucky stares at a wall—dissociates according to Sam—and other times that he regresses to his silence. The fact that they have conversations again, that Bucky is taking care of himself more, doing things without being asked, told, or offered, is a huge improvement.

 

Steve is careful shutting the door behind him. The house might not be old, but the whole thing still shakes sometimes if they are closed with more than human strength.

All the lights are off, the house quiet. It is just past three in the morning so Steve had expected no welcome. Carefully, he steps around Bucky’s shoes that he knows will be scattered near the doormat and listens for the soft _whump, whump_ of the helicopter heading back to New York.

Before heading to bed, Steve stops in the kitchen. His body feels fatigued, a result of how high his caloric intake is to sustain his body. Impatient to see Bucky, Steve doesn’t spend time making a real meal and just stirs protein powder into a huge glass of water, putting in twice as much powder as the instructions say. It is gritty and tastes of faint chemicals but Steve downs it and quickly heads towards the bedrooms.

Despite the bone deep exhaustion from traveling halfway across the world, fighting a legion of Hydra agents, and destroying the base, Steve still heads to the bathroom before the bedroom. He gets in the shower before the water is even warm, too impatient to wait. He doesn’t want to be standing any longer than he has to be. He notices with satisfaction that the cut on his bicep is already a pink scar and that the bruising that he had noticed when he changed out of his uniform during the flight has begun to fade.

He only stays in the shower long enough for the water to change from red to pink to clear, head bowed under the fixture head as a combination of Hydra blood and his runs down the drain. Then he shuts off the water and grabs a fluffy white towel from the shelf over the toilet. Wrapping it around his waist, he heads to Bucky and his room.

The door creaks slightly as Steve enters the master bedroom. He immediately peaks at the bed, hoping he did not disturb Bucky.

“Nat?” Steve asks stupidly. There is no other redhead that would be here, Nat having been the one to stay with Bucky while Steve was away.

“No, the tooth fairy,” she responds, but her usual bite to such a remark is missing, her hushed tone disallowing it.

Steve stares for a moment at the bed. Bucky is curled up, not dissimilarly to a cat, with his head on a pillow propped up by Natasha’s thigh. His chest rises and falls in what Steve can only consider restful sleep. Natasha herself can’t say the same; it appears she had not intention of sleep, with how she is leaning against the headboard with a StarkPad in her hands.

“Are you working right now?”

Natasha shrugs. “If Hydra doesn’t sleep than neither can I.”

“Everyone sleeps,” Steve tells her as he moves to the closet, opening the doors and moving so that they are situated between himself and the bed. He changes quickly, pulling on an old cotton tee and plaid pj pants before reappearing.

There is a long moment, punctuated only by Bucky’s breathing, as Steve stands at the end of the bed and gazes down at him. Natasha thinks the amount of fondness in Steve’s eyes might actually be strong enough to telepathically wake Bucky.

She breaks the trance. “He couldn’t sleep, kept whimpering as he dozed off and I’d wake him before he got into actual nightmares, so we ended up with this arrangement.”

“Yeah he’s not really used to…sleeping alone anymore.”

A small smile graces Natasha’s lips. She makes to shift, to leave the bed now that Steve is here, but he stops her.

“Nope,” he chides, “there is no way in hell you are moving if he could wake.”

“Steve,” she meagerly protests as he lifts the blankets and tucks himself in beside her, pressing his cold hands between his chest and her leg as he pillows his head on her other thigh, a mirror image of Bucky, two parenthesis surrounding Nat.

“Well there’s no way I can move now, not with your big head weighing me down,” she jokes. Steve shuffles closer, pointedly moving more of his weight onto her.

A gentle hand touches his hair, delicately playing with a strand before blunt nails scratch through, massaging his scalp. Steve breathes a deep sigh, relaxing muscles and he didn’t even know were tensed.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

 

In the morning, Steve makes breakfast. Natasha is still asleep, having actually stayed in her sitting position when Steve had dozed off and gotten what was arguably the worst sleep of her life. When everyone had stirred as Bucky got up to head to the bathroom, she had quietly informed Steve that he snored like a grandfather. He was sure that had not helped her situation.

As Steve folds the sides of the omelets into the middle of the pan, covering the contents inside, he watches Bucky out the patio door. They plan to eat at the table on the small deck, where steaming cups of coffee already sit.

The bacon snaps loudly, the fat cooking, and Steve glances back down at the pans. The sizzling of the bacon intensifies and Steve finds himself hurriedly turning down the heat before the strips burn.

“Steve?” Bucky suddenly asks. The tone of his voice makes Steve hurriedly drop the spatula and move towards the cracked patio door, where Bucky stands on the other side of the glass.

“Buck, everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies as Steve draws closer. “Just… can we keep her?”

Steve glances down. There is a dog seated beside Bucky’s socked feet.

After Steve finishes gently chastising Bucky for not wearing shoes outside, they face the dilemma of the dog. Or, to be more accurate, Steve listens to Bucky beg to keep the dog. It is obvious that Steve is not going to be able to say no, he knows himself too well.

“She doesn’t have a collar or anything?” Steve asks, crouching down on the rough planks of the deck to be eye level with the stray. Her eyes, almost too human for comfort, stare back at him. She is obviously some sort of collie mix, her coat thick and rough and a gentle golden brown in color.

“Do you want to stay?” Steve asks her, voice higher pitched than normal. The dog wags.

Natasha walks into the kitchen fifteen minutes later to Bucky digging through the fridge for something a dog can eat while Steve is wiping off her muddy paws with the kitchen towel.

“Good morning?” she asks, rubbing her eyes with a fist. “It is morning right? I’m not dreaming?”

“You’re awake,” Steve assures her with a smile. “Meet the new housemate.”

By the end of breakfast, she is named Lady. It is partially because every time Bucky feeds her scraps from the table—much to Steve’s dismay—she takes the offering daintily from Bucky’s hand, just barely using her teeth, and Bucky says she is a true lady. Steve also assumes that it stems from the fact that the night before his most recent mission, they had watched _Lady and the Tramp_ together.

Natasha volunteers to wash dishes, so Steve dries. They have a dishwasher but it is probably the cheapest one the home builders could get their hands on as it is useless for actually getting dishes clean.

Lost in thought as he dries the omelet pan, Steve takes a moment to register Natasha gently bumping him with her hip, hands buried in soapy water. He looks up at her and she just tilts her head to motion behind them.

Steve turns to see Bucky sat cross legged on the floor, his human hand extended to Lady. She gently leans forwards to sniff his fingers, then gives them a gentle lick. He switches arms now, offering the metal one. Bucky is obviously nervous about this, his shoulders tightening and tension worming its way into his muscles. Lady sniffs this hand too, and after only a moment’s hesitation, licks Bucky’s left hand.

“I think she will be good for him,” Natasha observes in an undertone. Steve agrees.

 

Steve thinks that the UPS man probably hates them. He knows he would if he had to drive the back route to their country home every other day.

Bucky is now _addicted_ to Amazon Prime.

After being unable to find a dog collar that wasn’t a cheap buckle one or something fit for a two hundred pound guard dog, Bucky has taken to ordering everything for Lady off of Amazon. He even ordered her special dog food, explaining to Steve that dog food is barely regulated in the U.S. and that recalls only happen when someone’s dog dies and they file a lawsuit. But in Canada, they have laws and so Lady was eating some expensive food that Canada recommended and was for sale nowhere in Custer City.

Their living room has also acquired a large round dog bed and the backyard has enough tennis balls and bones for an entire litter of puppies.

Steve thought Lady was spoiled, but still couldn’t hold back the soft smiles when Bucky sat on the living room floor with her or played fetch alongside the pond. It was something Steve didn’t think he would ever find it within himself to complain about.

It is less than a week later that Hill calls Steve’s current burner phone. There is another located Hydra base, heavily suspected to harbor a Keres bunker. Now that they knew what they are looking for amongst the recovered information, Keres seems to be unearthing itself, like a vampire buried in the night; more lethal and bloodthirsty than ever before.

Although the latter may not be true, as Keres has been killing innocents for nearly a decade, it sure feels like it to Steve. Mostly because they were not after _his_ innocents until recently.

“When do we leave?” Steve asks Hill, leaning against the kitchen counter. Bucky is curled up on one end of the sofa with a book and Lady, but Steve knows he is not reading. The way his head is cocked just slightly towards the kitchen, too subtle for anyone to notice who doesn’t know that Bucky drops his head like a deadweight because of his sore shoulder.

“A helicopter will be there at eighteen hundred hours with Barton.”

Steve glances at the microwave to check the time. He has three hours to be ready.

“Roger that.”

Hill chuckles and hangs up.

There is only a beat of silence before Bucky speaks. “When?”

“Chauffer will be here before dinner,” Steve tells him, leaving his cell on the counter and moving into the living room to occupy the opposite end of the sofa from Bucky. Lady is sprawled across the cushions and Steve has to lift her back feet to be able to fit himself. She immediately pushes them against his thigh, demanding more space. Bucky rubs her head lovingly.

 

It is quiet in the cottage, the rain a dull noise outside the safety of the walls. On the coffee table are two empty cups, just the dregs of caffeine left in the bottoms, forgotten once they had grown cold. The TV remote is in Bucky’s hand, the views of the security cameras blinking on and off the screen. It is a slow rotation, nothing ridden with more meaning than a casual check of their safety. Steve has files open on his StarkPad, looking over the information on Keres that Sam had sent him earlier in the day.

Bucky suddenly shifts and Steve glances down the sofa to see what is going on. Lady has wandered over from the dog bed by the small wood burner, looking imploringly at Bucky. With a sigh, Bucky shifts closer to Steve on the sofa and pats the cushion now left open. With a wag, Lady hops up beside him.

Bucky spends a couple moments shifting, finding a way to get comfortable. Steve instinctually opens his arms, moving the StarkPad to the side and Bucky reclines against him, a human pillow to drape across.

“Want to watch something besides security footage?” Steve asks gently. It is the first time anyone has spoken in a few hours. The words feel like a dagger through the peace and quiet.

They end up scrolling through Netflix and into the “classics” section to select _Cinema Paradiso_. It ends up being a long film, and in Italian at that, but they read the subtitles and follow along just fine. It is beautiful, no doubt about that, and the music is perfect.

When Salvatore goes to war, Bucky tenses against Steve. Lady perks up, feeling the shift on the couch, and Steve brushes his thumb gently along Bucky’s arm.

“I left you.” It isn’t a question.

“Buck, you were drafted,” Steve corrects. “You had to go.”

“But… did you need me?” It is the hardest question that Bucky could have asked. Should Steve say no, he would know it a lie. _Of course_ he needed Bucky, he needed Bucky like a flame needed oxygen and a bird needed to fly to feel free. But his fear—should he say yes—was for Bucky to blame himself, to hate himself, for leaving Steve in that other lifetime.

Instead of either, Steve reaches forwards and uses his index finger to tilt Bucky’s head so that he may see his face. The ocean gray eyes look back, worried. Steve leans forwards and presses a gentle kiss to Bucky’s forehead, squeezing his eyes shut and relishing in this moment, this perfect moment with Bucky beside him and comfort all around. _This_ is what matters, not the past.

 

“Nat, aren’t you going back to New York?”

“Eventually but I’m not done with this conversation.”

Steve groans, stopping in the front lawn to readjust his shield and dirty uniform in his arms. “Why? I was done ten minutes ago.”

“Well that was you.”

When they reach the front door, wind pounding their backs as the quinjet takes off again, it clicks open, revealing Bucky framed against the darker interior of their home.

Steve rushes through with quick strides, leaving it hanging wide open for Natasha to let herself in. His embrace of Bucky is all encompassing, even lifting him off his feet for a moment. “Buck,” Steve sighs into Bucky’s shoulder, like he is a drowning man and Bucky is his first breath of air. It is a stark change to the offhand way he had been speaking to Natasha a moment ago.

“Steve?” Bucky questions. His confused eyes glance over his shoulder to meet Natasha’s. She gives nothing away.

Steve draws Bucky in tighter for a moment before letting go and heading towards the kitchen. Bucky’s eyes are still watching Natasha, his body turning to follow before he disengages their gazes.

“Who wants lunch?” Steve asks as he opens the refrigerator. Wanda is in the adjoining living room, a movie paused on the TV. There is an abandoned blanket beside her, like Bucky had jumped from the couch to open the door when he had heard the quinjet. Lady is curled on the couch cushion in between.

“Steve,” Natasha tries.

“Are we thinking sandwiches or something else?”

“ _Steve._ ”

Bucky is getting visibly agitated where he has positioned himself between them, in the kitchen with Steve and the counter between them and Natasha. Lady’s nails tick on the floor as she moves to his side.

“What is going on?” Wanda asks from the couch, leaning her weight so that she can jump to her feet at a moment’s notice.

“Nothing is and Natasha needs to leave,” Steve says, voice too loud like if he drowns out every other noise, his words will be true.

Natasha leans forwards, supporting her weight on her hands against the counter top. Bucky watches her and then turns back to Steve, taking a few steps to close the distance between them. The fridge is still open, but Steve has long ago given up on actually seeing what is on the shelves.

“What happened?” Bucky asks Steve, gently placing a hand on Steve’s side to draw his attention. When Steve jumps back from his touch, Bucky looks scared but then puts two-and-two together. He forcefully grabs the hem of Steve’s shirt, a comfortable, old Yankees shirt he had changed into on the quinjet, and pulls it up to reveal the dark bruising down his side, punctuated by lacerations.

“It’ll be gone in a few hours,” Steve says hurriedly. It’s the tone of voice that makes Bucky knit his eyebrows. If there isn’t anything to hide, Steve would not be concerned with when the bruises will be gone. If there is nothing to hide, Steve would have just blown it off with a noise metaphorical to a shrug.

Bucky’s eyes flick to Natasha and now she is showing something real in her own, pleading with Bucky to get Steve to cooperate.

“Steve, why don’t you and Natasha sit on the porch?” Bucky suggests. “The loons were at the pond again this morning, they might still be out there.”

Steve is still turned away from everyone, but they can all see his expansive shoulders slump in defeat. Without a word, he heads for the patio door. Natasha glides to her feet and follows behind.

It is quiet outside, just the wind creaking the branches of the trees and birds singing far off in the pine forest. The loons are not at the pond, but there is a heron that warily watches them when it hears the door. When they settle into the chairs of the patio set, it seems to deem them a non-threat and goes back to fishing.

There is a long silence only filled by the meager noises of nature and Steve’s heavy sigh. Natasha hesitantly taps a perfectly rounded nail onto the glass top of the table.

“Steve, you’re not okay.”

“I’m fine.” The response comes so quickly that Natasha isn’t even sure he meant to say it. She can see the way he is tensing though, and the truth will come out sooner rather than later.

It takes about ten seconds. It’s the easiest interrogation Natasha has ever done and that scares her. “Just because—I got hurt, I didn’t—Happens every mission, you get hurt too. I just don’t see why…It’s different.” Steve is too defensive, like inside the house. A confirmation.

“Steve, you’re taking unneeded risks, being reckless.” Natasha pauses between sentences. “It scares me.”

There is a long pause in which Steve does not respond, does not even look at her, just gazes out across the pond, shadowed by the jagged rock jutting from the hill alongside. Natasha just continues addressing his profile.

“I’ve read your file,” Natasha continues. “Well, I’ve read everyone’s file on the team. But yours I think I have read the most. Because I had to know if I was right, I had to know if I should be concerned. When they pulled the Valkyrie out of the ice, they did some analysis. That along with Peggy Carter’s account of her communications with you before radio silence really paints a picture.” Steve visibly gulps but still isn’t looking at Natasha. “You didn’t have to go down with the Valkyrie, did you?”

The point blank nature of the question causes Steve to bite down on the inside of his cheek. He lets out a long breath through his nose that sounds a lot like a confirmation. It is the only kind he can give, never before having voiced this.

“Oh Steve,” Natasha says, almost too quiet to hear. She pushes back from the table, moving to his side to awkwardly hug around his broad shoulders. One of his hands comes up from where they rest on the table to grip her wrist.

They are silent for a while, Steve’s gentle sniffles punctuating each deep inhale. The silence might speak louder than any words could.

When Natasha speaks again, she loosens her arms and rubs absentmindedly along Steve’s back. “We’ll take Wanda to Krakow, give you a break, spend some time here instead of jetting off again…” Natasha is surprised by her own rambling, not usually one for so many words.

“What? No!” Steve says, surprising Natasha by brashly standing, shaking off her embrace and finally looking her in the eyes. “I’m not—I’m not going to sit it out like this is a soccer game.” He is surprised, shocked even, that she seemed to assume he would.

“Steve, I just think some off time would be good for you—“

“Nat, it’s not like that though, I wouldn’t—The only reason that happened before was because…Buck…When he fell that was—I couldn’t handle—I didn’t want to…”

Natasha feels like she is watching Steve crumble, lose mass right before her eyes and revert to the ailing Brooklyn boy she has only ever seen pictures of. His shoulders slump and his originally charged voice is losing steam, a speeding car just run out of gas, a music box winding down after being wound all the way.

“I didn’t want to live without Bucky.” Steve’s face is in his hands now, muffling his words.

For a moment, they both just breathe. Steve feels like the air is thick, harder than normal to draw in. His eyes are closed, the sunlight heating the lids, lighting the veins as Natasha waits for something, anything more, because she does not know what to do.

She ponders every detail she knows about Steve. His calm before the team and in the face of the greatest threats; Of his shield bashing into Chitauri, into Ultron’s minions, into Hydra sleeper agents. Natasha thinks of him jumping from a quinjet without a parachute; Of Steve’s unyielding protection, of herself moving to him as a grenade exploded and the two of them crashing through a window; Of Steve carrying her from the wreckage of Camp Lehigh, their survival an occurrence above all odds; Of standing on an ascending meteorite staring out at Sokovia during the eye of the raging battle; Of him ducking behind his shield in the face of a rocket launcher, not running; Of the files and files of Commandos operations recounting Steve’s risks; Of security footage from the Triskelion, Steve jumping from the elevator through the glass ceiling below; Of Steve’s calm warning to Tony that pushing the nuke into the New York wormhole was a one way trip.

“Bucky is _everything_ ,” Steve finally whispers.

Natasha suddenly has a thought. “The helicarrier…” she begins. Steve’s eyelashes flutter like he is about to open them but thinks better of it. “Was that…?”

“I couldn’t lose him again,” Steve says. “It was different but…if there wasn’t Bucky in there then…” he trails off, taking a deep steadying breath as he does, before continuing. “Then I didn’t want to keep going.”

Natasha doesn’t know if she really understands love, but if she does, then she thinks this is what it looks like in its harshest, most brutal, merciless form.

“And now…?”

“Now I have Bucky,” Steve responds immediately. To him, it is an explanation in and of itself.

“But you’re still risking yourself,” Natasha goes on. “You took that hit from the truck but you didn’t need to Steve. I know that you know Clint could get out of the way, easily duck and roll. You’ve seen him do it a thousand times, hell you’ve _trained_ with him and seen it. You know he _practices_ dodges like that.”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment, but Natasha doesn’t miss the way his hands tighten at his sides, fingers tucking into a fist.

“How is that different from you?” He asks, and his tone is different, angry again, the car refueled. “You’ve never taken yourself off a mission, never asked to sit one out even when—Even when you were ready to go _down_ with Ultron.”

The observation is like a slap to the face and Natasha is actually shocked for a moment. She didn’t know Steve had ever thought anything of that moment, that he had stored it away like this.

“You were ready to _die_ , ready to give up your personal survival. Nat, you of all people have to understand because—You made a fucking joke about the view, said it was one of a _fucking_ kind when you could literally climb any damn mountain. You didn’t have to be on an extinction meteorite for that, you didn’t have to resign before the battle was even close to over, you didn’t have to lose _hope_ but you did and you want to take _me_ of a mission when you know _exactly_ the headspace, and you _understand_ what the fuck is going on up here!” Steve frantically motions to his head before turning his back, whole body vibrating as he contains the raging storm of emotions coursing through his veins. This is the most animated Natasha may have ever seen him, the calm exterior, the stonewall, broken now. It turned out to be a dam.

“You should get it,” Steve says, more to himself than her, a quiet admittance to the wilderness surrounding them.

Before Natasha can respond, the sliding door is pulled open. Lady pads out first, hurrying to Steve’s side and sniffing him, checking, before turning to Natasha. Bucky flows out after her like a shadow, a cautious expression on his face.

“I heard yelling.” Bucky’s voice is scared.

“Buck, it’s fine, everything's fine,” Steve says, pivoting and moving towards the door. He takes Bucky in his arms again, an all-encompassing embrace. He clings to Bucky, fingers pressing firmly into his back. Natasha and Bucky share a glance.

“It is,” Natasha affirms, her words thick around a marble in her throat. “We’re done here.”

Later, when Steve wakes from the post mission nap Bucky had demanded he take, Natasha has already left. Apparently, Tony sent a helicopter for her and Wanda. Steve is glad, since when he does wake, it is from a dream that leaves him covered in sweat and with a feeling of vertigo deep in his stomach.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! Let me know what you think! There will be one more chapter probably, but I am also bad at guesstimating on that sort of thing so we will see. I also apologize for how long it will take me to get that chapter up, as I have resumed college for the year now and am much busier then over the summer. It WILL get done though, I promise! I am also working on a lot of other fics and fandom writing so keep an eye out for those if you want more reading material in the meantime. I write a lot of little stuff when I need the mental breather from the heaviness of this story. 
> 
> I'd also like to quickly note that once this story is finished, there will be a complete overhaul editing fiasco because there are details I wish I had added in at the beginning and a few things I want to change.
> 
> On my tumblr I also made a [ page ](http://freshstuckytrash.tumblr.com/whenaheartknowsfear) for this fic that has links to pictures of some of the content, like a link to a gallery of Black Hills photography and a dog that looks like how I picture Lady. Check it out!


	4. Breaking Up With Myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter definitely requires trigger warnings, so if you would like to ask specifics of what is included, please don't hesitate to message me on [tumblr](http://smithsonianstucky.tumblr.com) to ask about any specific warnings you need. The subject matter covered in this chapter is covered by the trigger warnings issued at the beginning of this work however, so you can also check that.
> 
> This is the last chapter and I just want to say how thankful I am for everyone who has read along with WaHKF and provided their comments, feedback, and support as I tackled my first ever Stucky fic. I have enjoyed this so immensely and writing this fic immersed me into the fanfiction world again after several years outside of it and I am so grateful.
> 
> Title from _The Fall_ by Imagine Dragons
> 
> I also want to issue a huge thank you to my beta Kirstin who catches all of my misues of breath versus breathe and the random extra spaces that appear because Google drive sucks sometimes. Thank you so much for sticking with me through this monster of a fic! All remaining errors are my own!

Steve has gotten used to waking up with the warmth of his body wrapped around another and a furry animal at their feet. There is a comfort in the almost too warm aspect of it, and a security in so much life surrounding his.

So when Steve wakes to an empty bed, his initial feeling is loneliness. The fear sets in moments later. He rises slowly, the blanket falling away from his torso to rumple around his waist as he surveys the room. It is empty and clean, with no clear signs of a struggle.

It is as he swings his feet off the bed and is preparing to creep out to the main living space and check the house’s security that Steve’s mind registers the smells wafting from the kitchen: coffee, eggs, and cheese.

Steve shakes the tension from his muscles, all is well and safe, and heads to the kitchen with a gentle curiosity.

The light is falling softly through the windows, Steve somehow sleeping through to mid morning for the first time in months. It has been a little over a week since the last mission, so perhaps this has attributed to some mental calm. Lady is curled on the floor in the living room, tail thumping softly as she notices Steve padding into the room.

His heels drag against the wood floors as he slips behind Bucky at the stove, resting his head on the other man’s right shoulder to look at the pan.

“Omelets?” Steve asks, cheek brushing Bucky’s ear.

Bucky hums in response, an affirmation. His body thrums, a gentle muscle quiver in response to Steve’s proximity. This is something new.

Steve relaxes into Bucky, wrapping his arms around to hold Bucky in an embrace that feels all too intimate for some reason. It lasts but a moment, their bodies resting against one another as the eggs cook before Steve pulls away. He doesn’t know what has come over him.

“Has Lady been out?” he asks. The dog perks up at her name, collar tags jingling as she comes into the kitchen.

Bucky turns to look at Steve, his grayish blue eyes holding something akin to an ache. “Not yet.”

Steve moves to the backdoor, sliding the glass open for Lady to pad outside and do her business. He watches her through the glass for a moment as she sniffs around the one of the trees that holds up Bucky’s hammock.

“We should spend time outside today, maybe eat breakfast on the porch,” Steve says. Behind him, there is the scrape of Bucky using a spatula to flip the omelet. “This will be one of the last warm days of the year.”

They do so, eating their eggs at the table on the porch and drinking coffee together in their hammock long after it should have been cold. Lady lies beneath them amongst the brown and orange leaves. She almost matches.

The sun is high in the sky, shadows from the few leaves still attached to their lofty counterparts dappling them with sun and shade. The height of the sides of the hammock force the both of them to slide into the middle, their sides pressed together the entire length of their bodies.

Steve doesn’t know when the last time he felt this peaceful was. He doesn’t dwell on this fact. Instead, he tilts his head back and basks in the last warm rays and cradles the coffee cup in his hands, thinking about how fortunate this moment is.

        That night is rough however. Steve wakes abruptly after just a few hours of sleep, jolting to a sitting position and almost knocking heads with Bucky who is leaning over him, a hand on either side of Steve’s face as he wakes him from the troubled dream.

“Safe house. South Dakota. 2015,” Steve gasps. This is a routine now, establishing if they know where and when they are after coming out of a nightmare. Both of them still imagine the war, imagine the helicarrier, imagine every terrible thing that has happened to them. Sometimes, it is hard to break away from these scary images.

Bucky removes his hands and moves several feet back to give him space. Steve folds over and pulls his knees to his chest, shoulders hunched as he waits for them to cease shaking. When Bucky notices the quivering, he forcefully tucks himself into Steve’s side and under his arm, a solid comfort as he slowly lets the dream fade away.

Steve leans to rest his head on Bucky’s, his hair soft beneath Steve’s cheek. He doesn’t understand how he survived for so many years after the ice without this, without such connection to someone. Perhaps he was holding onto Bucky all along, waiting even before he knew there was a reason to be waiting for his return. Perhaps somehow he had known.

They had been given a second chance; at life and one another. Both of them had been cruelly spared from their first demise and Steve hopes that fate has had its fill of puppeteering. With that thought, he finally feels the tension seep from his muscles and his body relax.

Then, he presses his lips fleetingly to Bucky’s head in thanks and extracts himself from the bed. It is somewhat difficult, as the sheets are wrapped around his feet, a sign that he had been thrashing before breaking from the nightmare. Lady hops off of the bed and follows him. Bucky does not, just slumps across the mattress, taking up the whole bed, and waits for Steve to return. His eyes glint in the darkness and Steve knows he will wait to sleep until Steve returns to bed, too scared of his own nightmares to be alone.

In the kitchen, Steve fills a glass of water at the sink and sits on the floor, petting Lady’s soft fur as he sips. The floor had been mandatory as his knees felt weak and there is sweat cooling on his forehead but he has experienced worse. Lady noses at his hand when he returns it to his lap and he grudgingly continues to pet her, idly wondering how such a friendly dog ever ended up running stray. Steve had called around in the days following her arrival, but no local vet or police secretary had heard of any lost dogs matching her description. Either she had traveled _that_ far or her previous owner had not tried to find her. Both made Steve’s heart ache.

Steve stares off into space, eyes unfocused on the white wall alongside the kitchen. Lady’s fur is soft beneath his fingers as they stroke through it rhythmically, pacing up and down from her neck to her hip. He starts to lose track of time, eyes glazed over as he thinks about everything and nothing at the same time.

It is Lady suddenly perking up that causes Steve to come back to himself, her head lifting from the floor and her ears perked attentively. Steve listens, wondering what she hears.

And then he hears it too: a whimpering call from the next room. Steve and Lady bolt to their feet at the same time, but she races ahead on four legs and turns the corner into the bedroom several steps in front of Steve.

Lady is on the bed when Steve enters the room, shoving herself into the blankets beside Bucky. He has obviously fallen asleep, waiting for Steve to return to bed, and without either of their presences, he has fallen into a nightmare.

In comparison to Steve’s, Bucky’s seem calm. Steve knows from experience however that Bucky will shout if he falls too deeply into the dream world, will scream his throat raw if he is let be.

Lady is already waking him however, pushing her cold nose into Bucky’s side and then moving to lick his face. Steve is frozen at the foot of the bed, watching the interaction. It is obvious that Bucky is already waking up, groggy noises releasing from between his lips and body rolling to the side, like his subconscious mind is trying to get away from Lady’s tongue.

When Bucky’s eyes blink open, Steve’s body kicks itself into movement again, moving onto the bed and to his side. Lady has laid herself half on top of Bucky now, offering her steady weight as grounding.

“Buck?” Steve asks, cautious.

“Safe house. 2015,” he answers promptly and Steve is grateful that he didn’t fall too far into the dream. The affirmation of his mental presence gives Steve the okay to move closer, scooting his body across the mattress to curl up right beside Bucky, his large form folded small as always when he sleeps, still a small man at heart.

“You okay?” Steve breathes. There is a rustling as Bucky nods, his hair brushing the sheets.

They stay like that, two still bodies laying the wrong way across the mattress. Lady is still on Bucky and one of his hands gently plays with the tip of her ear. Neither of them sleep for the rest of the night.

 

Steve has realized that less and less scares him these days: like the concept of death. He lied to Natasha, not outright, but he is slowly realizing the fallacy in his words. It isn’t something that is easy to come to terms with.

Granted, following the events with Ultron, Steve thinks they’ve all become a little more comfortable with the idea of dying on the job. Natasha had accepted that they would die while on the meteorite and Clint comes close on nearly every mission. Heck, if Pietro had not sacrificed himself, Clint would be dead right now. But Steve doesn’t think the other Avengers are quite on the same wavelength as him.

The feeling manifests as a strange disconnection to danger in Steve’s head, like if a car was speeding at him, he isn’t sure if his first instinct would be to get out of the way. It’s in the way that he doesn’t flinch away from the cold of gunmetal anymore. It’s the way that he didn’t pull his hand away immediately when he burned himself on the stove yesterday.

He doubts Clint and Natasha would want to be on this mission with him if they had any clue what a mess his mind has become. Steve knows he will be reckless, but can’t find it within himself to change that. Why should it matter if he takes a few extra hits and breaks a few bones if it means the mission is accomplished? Just the anxiety-inducing flight over the Pacific to reach the east coast of Russia has clicked a gear into place in his mind. Activated now is an overly calm mission agent with a lack of self-preservation. The only thing acting as a safety net for his loosened security is his dedication to the mission. Keres and Hydra have been and always will be his bigger picture. It is details of how this overarching goal will be achieved that have changed over time for him. Undoubtedly, he is not as reliant as people think he is. He is exhausted.

“Two minutes,” Natasha calls, addressing the small group behind her. Everyone is strapping on their gear, readying for the descent. Their mission today is to infiltrate a Hydra base outside of Prague. They had suspected for a long time that Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic, had begun to affiliate with Hydra, and the abduction of a SHIELD agent had confirmed his involvement. The SHIELD agent had been snatched while unknowingly running recon for the team on Keres by Agent Hill’s instructions. Considering Russia’s connections to Hydra and Keres, as well as the budding friendship between the two leaders, they had reason to suspect foul play.

This mission’s team includes a few SHIELD agents as back up to help get the abducted agent, Agent Hult. Meanwhile, Clint, Natasha, and Steve will run Keres recon inside. Steve doesn’t like the double agent nature—it is too similar to the situation that had caused problems on the Lemurian Star—but he is not going to argue with Natasha’s plan, nor pass up an opportunity to obtain more information on Keres.

“Steve, you taking a knife?” Natasha says, pulling Steve away from his wandering mind. She is holding out a small blade, the size he usually tucks into his belt as a last resort weapon. This one is familiar; it is the switchblade they removed from Bucky’s belt when he’d first arrived at the tower. Steve had forgotten that it was Natasha whom he had asked to hide Bucky’s weapons. His breath hitches at its presence.

“Thanks, Nat.” He delicately takes the switchblade, flipping it between his fingers for a moment before tucking it into his belt for safekeeping. When Steve looks back at Natasha, her face is a mask of concern. He thinks it might be authentic.

They disembark to a drop point one mile out from the known location of the base. Steve instructs Natasha to scout ahead while he takes point and leads the group of Avengers and SHIELD. Coulson assured them that the remaining agents of the organization are all reliable and dedicated, true SHIELD operatives. It doesn’t stop Steve’s neck hairs from prickling when they’re behind him.

“Woods are clear,” Natasha says through their comm unit. “Building within sight. Four visible guards.”

The group picks up their pace, sure now that they are not walking into a trap. Steve presses his hand to the earpiece. “On our way, hold your position.” It is an unnecessary order, he has worked beside Natasha enough times that he knows they can orchestrate an operation such as this with almost no words exchanged, but he does it for the sake of the operatives following behind him. He needs them to see that he is in charge, that he is calling the shots. In short, Steve doesn’t trust them.

When they catch up to Natasha, she is perched atop a slope, the edge of the woods signaling an entrance into a deep valley. The Hydra base appears to be a warehouse, just a rectangle with metal walls and a pitched roof. A few skylights sit in the sheet metal, providing light for the space within. The high fence that surrounds it is the detail that insinuates something more than storage, as well as the catwalk that circles just under the eaves. This is where the patrolling guards are stationed. Only two are currently in sight.

“Six guards in total,” Natasha reports at their approach. “They stop for twenty seconds then move to the next position. One on each corner and midway along the east and west walls. The fence doesn’t show signs of electricity but it is barbed” Steve loves doing missions with Natasha for a reason; her observation skills alone can make a mission prevail.

“Let’s split into two teams; one through the front and one through the back. I’ll take the front, Romanoff, lead the group in the back. Barton, can you get to the roof and in one of those skylights?” Clint nods. “Cover us from above. We are taking people alive, SHIELD wants anyone of importance to Hydra questioned. Guards don’t matter, higher ups do. And we must find Hult.”

Steve makes eye contact with his team one at a time, making sure everyone understands. He meets Natasha’s eyes last and the look of concern has been wiped away by her immersion into the mission. She is Agent Romanoff now.

“Three and three,” he tells the SHIELD agents, motioning with one hand to the middle point of the group. The two beside the line he has just drawn shuffle a little to the side, making the split more prominent. Steve feels like a high school gym coach. “Be ready for tricks. This may look easy but never take Hydra for granted.” Steve doesn’t mean to grit his teeth but he feels the sudden pressure on his molars, hard enough to almost hurt. “Let’s go.”

Barton snaps his bow open and grabs one of his arrows. Steve knows he is going to shoot a grappling hook to the roof and slide down with his bow. “I’ll wait for your command,” Clint says before Steve leads his team out. He nods his confirmation and then moves off into the woods, circling the building from a distance to reach the front door. Three sets of footsteps follow. Once they’re in position, ready to take out the guards on the catwalk and bypass the fence, Steve contacts Natasha.

“We’re in position. Widow Team status,” Steve requests.

There is silence on the comms for a minute, then a whispered, “In position.”

“Barton, status,” Steve requests.

“I’ve _been_ in position,” Clint remarks. Steve has to bite back a smart ass reply, wanting to remain more professional with the SHIELD agents along than he would on a normal Avengers’ mission.

“Enter on my count,” Steve commands. “Three, two, go.” He speaks it calmly but the tension in the air is palpable as Steve flings his shield at the guard on the southeastern corner and two of the SHIELD agents fire bullets to incapacitate the other guards in view.

All three go down smoothly.

“Two down on this side,” Natasha relays.

“Three down here. Barton?”

“Don’t worry, I got the last one.” Steve hadn’t actually doubted that Clint would have shot him.

All three teams enter the property, Steve’s shield easily breaking the padlock on the gate that crosses the drive up to the warehouse. They approach the entrance, a large metal door that reminds Steve of a barn. Windows lay on either side of it but no one has appeared in them. He keeps one SHIELD agent focused on both as they advance.

“Cap’s team in position.”

“Hawkeye in position.” He sounds bored.

“Widow’s team in position.”

“Proceed,” Steve tells them. He rushes forwards, darting past one of the windows—although he doubts they will be able to make him out from the dark trees while he is wearing his stealth suit—and slaps one of Tony’s portable computer bugs onto the keypad beside the door.

It takes five seconds before there is a click. Steve moves forwards, SHIELD agents behind him, and pushes one door open.

Inside, the warehouse is only one large room. However, it is a maze of crates, plates of shipping boxes arranged in aisles that seem to have had little planning. Just from the front door, Steve can see three different ways to enter the labyrinth.

“I’ve got a funny feeling about this,” Steve tells everyone.

“Are you seeing the same Rubik’s cube as me?” Natasha asks.

“Affirmative. Cover as much ground as possible, find Hult. Remember to take hostiles alive.”

“I’ll watch your backs from the rafters,” Clint tells them. Steve looks up to see him carefully detaching one of the panes of the skylight, cutting the sealant around the glass pane with a small switchblade, so that he can enter.

Steve then decides how to divvy up his own team. He expects that any agents will be along the walls, where there is more likely to be offices or desks of any sort for the organization of such a facility. He assigns two of the SHIELD agents to take the path to the far left. He then designates himself to the far right and has the last SHIELD agent take the path that leads towards the center of the building.

Now that Steve is alone, he realizes just how eerily quiet the place is. His footsteps echo off the metal walls and up to the ceiling.

“Give us eyes, Barton,” Steve requests. His nerves are prickling.

“I can’t see any hostiles, no eyes on Hult.”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Steve tells the comms.

Creeping along the wall, Steve comes to another break in the stored items, a path into the labyrinth. His path down the right side of the building has thus far brought him neither enemies nor information so he decides to cut away into the maze.

“Reports?” he requests of everyone.

“Unidentified movement in the southwest corner,” Barton informs.

“No hostiles encountered,” A SHIELD agent says.

Everyone affirms that they also have had no encounters, but one SHIELD agent does not respond.

“Agent Reno?” Steve requests. “Reno? Barton, do you have eyes on Reno?”

“Negative.”

“Romanoff, where did you send Reno?”

“Down the south side.”

“Could have been the movement,” Barton remarks.

“Anyone close to the corner?”

“Affirmative,” A SHIELD agent remarks.

“Survey and report.”

Steve continues to creep through the maze, checking around each corner briefly before moving on. He has turned so many times that the only thing keeping him orientated in the walled off space is looking up to the skylights and seeing Barton’s small, archer form high above.

There is no report for some time from the SHIELD agent who was to perform reconnaissance on the corner and Steve begins to raise his hand to contact them again when his comm unit suddenly bursts with static.

“Agents?” Steve immediately asks. “Can you hear me?”

He waits, still in his path of the maze, but no one answers. The sudden overwhelming feeling of loneliness engulfs him. Glancing up, he thankfully can still see Barton’s silhouetted form in the skylight. Barton is looking back, shaking his head. He cannot hear anyone either.

“Shit,” Steve swears under his breath, moving faster through the maze. They need to get out _now_ , this was a trap. There is no other reason for the comm to go out but the enemy disabling them somehow, an EMP that Tony’s tech could somehow not combat. And _that_ idea is terrifying.

As he hurries through the twists and turns, he suddenly comes to the middle of the labyrinth. And there he finds Agent Hult with Agent Reno in a chokehold, creeping along one side of the space so as to remain out of Barton’s view. Reno’s face is slowly turning blue.

“Hult!” Steve bellows, anger firing his voice across the space.

Somewhere else in the building, someone’s voice echoes back “Cap?!” but he ignores it, focusing on Hult and the paling face of Reno.

“Let him go,” Steve instructs the double agent.

Hult shuffles his hold on Reno, tightening it, but does not respond.

Steve can’t believe that the damn man they came to rescue was a trap, a red herring to draw them into a snare. He is seething with rage, he thinks his face might be turning red with. How _dare_ Hydra do this to _his_ team, to _his_ friends again…

Behind Hult there is a flash of red. _Natasha_. Steve purposefully does not track her movement, does not let his eyes even flick to her after his initial recognition. Looking past Hult to watch her would give it away, spoil the nasty surprise about to come his way.

As Steve stares down Hult, Natasha creeps closer, a Spider Bite loaded on her wrist and ready. Steve desperately does not watch as she fires, and Hult crumples to the ground, taking a nearly incapacitated Reno with him.

“I’ve got Reno, you take Hult,” Natasha tells Steve, sweeping forward to pull Reno away from Hult, and sit him up so that he can properly breath.

Steve swoops in and latches one of the zip tie handcuffs onto Hult’s wrists, restraining him for when he regains consciousness. Glancing upward from where Hult fell, Steve cannot see Clint. It almost feels as though Hult had planned the path around knowing what Clint could and could not see. The idea makes Steve’s skin crawl; they know the team too well.

After cuffing Hult, Steve moves to Natasha’s side, helping her support the staggering Agent Reno. The man gasps for breath like he has been underwater for hours and Steve wonders if Hult was actually trying to slowly kill him.

The loud click makes Steve and Natasha both spin to look back at Hult.

“Hail Hydra,” Agent Hult spits. Steve glances to Holt’s hands, still cuffed together behind his back. One shoulder is hanging too loose however, and Steve realizes with only seconds to spare that the agent has dislocated his shoulder to reach a device at his belt.

A device with a button and they are within a maze of crates bearing unknown contents in the middle of a Hydra facility. Steve turns to Natasha and pushes both her and Reno to the ground, covering their heads with his shield and their bodies with his own. The noise of the explosion is so loud that Steve can’t hear any of the others scream.

 

This must be hell. The devil has finally caught up to Steve, has caught him after seventy years past his time and is pulling him down to the fiery pits. He would fight back against the dark hands pulling him under if he could, but each of his limbs feel like a tankard truck. It is oddly reminiscent of the last time he felt this tired, of laying back on a helicarrier and letting his cheekbone crack under the weight of a metal fist. He is going down, to fire instead of water, and he can’t stop it. This time, there is no hand to plunge in and pull him from the depths, no savior, and he is burning. He supposes it is the punishment he deserves for the moments he has stolen, the extra years after the ice and the catastrophe he has caused. He has taken so much; he supposes it is time to give back.

But the fire hurts. It licks up his body and burns every inch of skin, of vein, of weakened muscle. He is raw, skin peeled open and everything on the table: secrets, sinew, and soul. His chest bangs, a horrible, surprising jump of his heart. The rawness of every feeling astounds him and he gasps for air, for some reprieve. Distantly, there is a voice…

“We have a pulse!”

The noise is too much, Steve’s senses overwhelmed by both pain reception and noise reception. He is burning and it isn’t ceasing, it will never stop. Maybe _this_ is the payment he owes for his extra years, for ever coming out of the ice. It is a temperature trade, seventy years of cold for seventy years of heat. He doesn’t know if he can survive this payment if he does not fall unconscious during it. At least when he had been in the ice he hadn’t been able to feel the frostbite eating away at him.

Steve gasps, needing air. It feels like a panic attack to him, but worse because his lungs burn, feel charred from the inside out.

“More oxygen!” that voice says and Steve wishes everyone would be quiet because it’s hard enough to deal with this pain already. He just wants to fade to nothing, to leave this torture behind. He has stopped falling, the devil has let go of him now, and he almost wishes that he would come back and take Steve all the way. Because this is too much…far too much…

Something touches him and he wants to scream but his lungs aren’t working and he can’t breathe, aching in protest when he tries to draw so much air in and out.

“Mr. Stark, the sedative please!” and someone touches him again and Steve could happily die right now if it would stop the pain, _god_ everything is burning, everything is fire, so hot it’s _cold_ and so painful it is almost nothing because of its eternal presence.

And then he finally fades away.

The subtle beeping is all too familiar to Steve’s groggy mind and it wakes him from the deepest sleep he thinks he has ever experienced. His head feels like there is a vice on it and his body feels raw. Steve groans aloud.

It takes a moment for him to realize that it is not the beeping that woke him, but the heavy footsteps pounding somewhere in his distant hearing, growing louder. Voices follow the footsteps, people arguing as they walk.

“Sir, dogs are not allowed in the hospital!”

“I hate to be the one to tell you that you’re wrong but you’re wrong,” a familiar voice chastises. “See this? This means that dog gets to go wherever he does.”

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t—“

“Do you even know who I am? I _paid_ for this entire wing of the hospital to _exist_ and my friend will damn well bring a dog in here if he—“

“ _Tony,_ ” another voice chastises. “Shut up and get your ass in here, he’s waking up.”

Steve knows they are referring to him—he too can hear the beeping of his heart monitor picking up as he becomes more conscious. Each beep is aggressive to his tender mind and he wishes it would stop but as he gets more and more annoyed with each beep, he wakes up more and the beeps become more frequent. It is a vicious cycle.

There are shuffling noises as those present move about but Steve still does not open his eyes, too tired to try. The heart monitor is still becoming more frequent though and he knows he will have to eventually but right now he just wants to fall back to painless sleep, even if it means deathly dreams. He would take dreams over this, over the discomfort and fire on his skin and ache in his bones…

“Bucky, it’s okay, come in,” an accented voice suddenly says and _now_ Steve is awake, although his eyes still feel too heavy to actually open, weighed down by the never ending discomfort and probably whatever pain meds Tony had pumped into his system.

“C’mon,” Wanda repeats and the sound of boots dragging on the floor sounds, along with the gentle tick of claws on the hospital tile.

And finally, _finally_ Steve gets past his procrastination and want for unconsciousness and cranks open his eyes one flutter of eyelashes at a time.

For a moment the bright, stark, whiteness of the room throws Steve into terrifying memories of waking up in 2012. His head begins to spin with this knowledge, a terrible feeling settling into the pit of his stomach as he imagines the future he will have to become accustom—

“Steve?” someone to his right asks and Steve whips his head to lock eyes with Sam.

Sam. It’s okay. But every fiber of his body is screaming in protest at moving. But he is still in the 21st century. It’s okay.

“On your left?” Sam asks, half a smile in his voice.

“Pretty sure that’s my right,” Steve corrects, or at least tries to. His voice comes out like an old truck gunning to life, taking several tries for the turn over before it can actually rumble. Quickly, he takes stock of his body. Everything he can see is covered in crisp, white bandages, down to each finger of his hands. They feel stiff and aching; he doesn’t know if he even wants to try to move them. The same holds true for the rest of his body, or at least what he can see of it. He assumes that the bandages covering burns extend down his legs beneath the blanket too.

“Maybe don’t talk, I was getting used to the quiet,” Tony quips and Steve moves just his eyes to find Tony by the door, leaning against the clean white wall of the hospital room. Steve’s eyes continue to roam, flitting across Wanda in a chair to the left of the bed and then to the dog in the foreground of his vision. Lady. His eyes lock onto the hand nestled in the fur on her shoulders, following the cotton sweatshirt sleeve up to a set of sturdy shoulders and then to Bucky’s face.

The worry that lives in the depths of his stormy blue eyes makes Steve’s stomach churn. There are tear stains down his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes are so prominent they look like bruises but the mere sight of Bucky, happy or not, eases a tension in his chest that he had not yet noticed the existence of.

“Buck,” he croaks. Bucky’s worry softens to a fond hopefulness.

“How ya doin?” He asks. His flesh hand moves from Lady’s back towards Steve, then pauses as he thinks better of it and moves it back to scratch at Lady’s ear. She leans into it, pressing herself along his side, a reminder of her calming presence.

“Been better,” Steve coughs. On the other side of the bed, Sam shuffles for a moment and then suddenly a cup with a straw is floating in front of Steve.

“Should probably drink something,” Sam informs him and Steve can’t help but be slightly embarrassed that he has to be cared for like this. His throat feels like a Brooklyn summer drought however, so he tilts his head forwards and Sam moves the cup closer so that Steve can sip water through the straw.

When he reclines his head heavily and winces in pain, Steve doesn’t miss the way Bucky grips at Lady’s collar before relaxing his hand back to stroking her fur. She inches closer to him.

Steve’s eyes pan up to lock with Bucky’s again and he thinks he could do this all day. But he also has questions that need answers.

“How are you here?” Steve asks, unable to keep the astonishment from his voice. Filtering emotions is for people who aren’t lying in hospital beds.

“Quinjet,” Bucky answers simply.

“He means I sent my jet for him and Wanda when I got the call from Clint,” Tony corrects. “Sent quinjets every which way to save your asses and gather the fam. Scared me half to death you idiot.”

“Goddamn asshole,” Sam breathed from his seat beside Steve’s head.

Steve would throw a meaningful glance at Sam if that didn’t mean he would have to turn his head again. He doesn’t have it in him to at the moment.

“How is Nat?” Steve asks, eyes flicking between every person in his vision. The heart monitor beeps erratically. Bucky visibly tenses.

“Better than you. Woke up last night and is recovering okay,” Sam informs him. “Worried as hell about you though, nearly tried to break from her room to come check on you.”

“Between everyone I think we could have stopped her,” Wanda teases. “I ended up giving her a calming vision and Clint tucked her back in.”

“But she’s okay?”

“Yes Steve, she’s going to be fine,” Sam assures, his voice exasperated.

It is the whisper from the other side of the bed that catches Steve’s attention.

“ _Fucking_ ….” And Steve doesn’t think he has heard Bucky swear since they have been in the 21st century. He doesn’t know what he has done at the moment to deserve to have drawn the soldier diction from its buried recesses of his mind.

“Buck?” Steve asks, hesitant.

“Steven Grant Rogers, you do not get to sacrifice yourself and then ask questions,” Bucky snaps. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve catches Tony’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline before he ducks out of the room. Wanda follows quickly.

Lady pushes her cold nose into Bucky’s palm, trying for his attention. Steve feels sorry for her, knowing she will be unable to claim it.

“Buck,I—“

“No, you listen to me,” Bucky nearly growls. “I love Natasha too, but you do _not_ get to leave me after everything. _Do you hear me?_ ” Steve is speechless. “I don’t care who you’re protecting or what valiant deed you are performing. I _need_ you,Stevie.”

Steve doesn’t know when he started crying but at a minimum it was at the use of the nickname and now the salt of his tears burn trails down his raw cheeks and he can’t even lift one of his heavily bandaged hands to wipe them away.

Bucky looks on, his flesh hand moving again to flutter around Steve. He is obviously distressed that he can’t touch him, that there isn’t a patch of skin that is safe to do so.

“It’s fine,Buck,” Steve consoles. “Just…” And Steve just hopes that Bucky understands what he is saying because actually asking for Bucky to touch him is a level of vulnerability that Steve is not ready for. Captain America does not ask for comfort, Captain America does not ask for anything but for his orders to be followed and the flag to fly high. But right now, Steve _needs_ to physically feel Bucky’s presence and that is not happening.

And thank the lord, Bucky understands what Steve wants and he gently, _gently_ reaches forwards and places a hand on Steve’s forearm. It hurts, Steve sucks in a sharp breath to silence the pain signal, but he feels like he can breathe better now, that the air is actually reaching the bottom of his bombed out lungs.

There is a long moment in which they simply stare at one another, eyes locked and so much passing between them that Steve feels overwhelmed. He has honestly forgotten that they are not completely alone until Sam addresses the woman standing in the doorway.

“Nurse?”

“He needs another dose of the pain meds…Mr. Stark said every two hours,” she explains, a note of apology in her voice for intruding on the moment.

Bucky’s hand had retracted as soon as Sam had spoken and Steve misses it but the nurse moves towards the bed and he can’t ask for it back, not now. Calm only on the exterior, Steve watches her insert a needle into the IV bag hanging above his head. She presses down the plunger and then disposes of the entire object in a sharps receptacle hanging on the wall.

“Now, this will probably make you drowsy,” she tells Steve as she makes a note on the wall chart. She glances up as she hears his heart rate already begin to decelerate though and glances down at Steve to see his eyes fluttering closed.

“Goodnight,” Sam jokes from his chair, but Steve is already down for the count.

 

The next time Steve wakes, he feels minimally better. The room is quiet but as he opens his eyes, Steve finds that it is not empty. First, he sees Clint, sat in a chair near the foot of his bed and playing a game on his phone. His thumbs flick across the screen mechanically and Steve thinks it might be Candy Crush. He blinks long and slow, eyes still weighted, and glances to both sides.

Outside the hospital room, Steve can see Sam, partially beyond the viewpoint through the doorway. He is talking in a hushed tone on the phone and Steve idly wonders who he is talking to He moves his eyes slowly to the other side and there he again finds Bucky.

Someone had brought a chair to him, and the ex assassin is seated in it now, head lolled to the side as he sleeps. The chair is situated in such a way that Steve can only assume he was watching the door and the window before succumbing to exhaustion. Steve can’t imagine how tired Bucky must have been to let his guard down in the hospital. On his lap is Lady, arguably too big to be curled on Bucky’s thighs but somehow managing it. Her sides rise and fall as she breathes deeply, Bucky’s metal hand resting on her back following the movement. Bucky’s other hand is resting on the bed beside Steve, close enough that Steve can fight through the burn of moving to slide his arm closer and touch Bucky’s pinkie finger. And then he slips back to sleep.

The third time Steve opens his eyes in the hospital room, the light from the windows is completely gone and everything has shifted. Well, everything other than Bucky.

He has changed clothes though and suddenly Steve is unsure how much time has passed. He had assumed it was simply night now, but hadn’t considered that more than one night could have passed…

Taking stock of his injuries is what makes Steve realize that this is indeed a different day. His skin has less of a burning feel and more of an ache. For the first time, his brain feels coherent enough to think about how he looks, wonder if his face is as red raw as it feels, like the worst sunburn he had ever acquired while loping around Coney Island with Bucky as kids.

Steve also knows that he is feeling better, has healed somewhat, because Bucky’s right hand is resting atop Steve’s left and only minimal pain signals are firing through his brain. He can’t find it within himself to care about this.

Slowly, Steve realizes that Bucky is waiting. He has remained silent as Steve got a bearing of his position in time and only now is he becoming aware of the eyes piercing into him, wondering.

“Hey,Buck,” Steve croaks, throat dry but not as raw.

The smile that cracks Bucky’s mask of concern makes Steve’s heart shutter.

It is silent in the room, gentle breathing from the other bedside the only indication of time passing or other life outside of their little world. Steve assumes it is Sam but doesn’t turn to check.

“How long was I out?” Steve asks, voice hushed to a rough whisper.

“Twelve hours. They upped your pain meds.”

Steve rolls his head on the pillow to look more fully at Bucky. “Tony approved?” he asks. Bucky nods.

 

A day and a half more pass before Steve is released. It is his longest hospital stay since he has received the super soldier serum. Bucky and Lady are there nearly the whole time, only leaving with Wanda and Sam when the latter insists Steve will be fine for a few hours while Bucky visits the tower to shower.

Steve had kept the anxiety to himself over Bucky returning there, the image of the Keres agents swinging in and smashing through the window still fresh in his mind. The heart rate monitor cannot be fooled however, and the nurses spend the few hours fretting over him with Tony seated by the window throwing jokes around as generously as his money.

When Steve is finally sober enough from Tony’s souped up pain medication to be thinking clearly, he asks Bucky how Lady is there.

“Three calls and Tony had her approved as an emotional support animal,” Bucky explains.

“But… you don’t have a doctor. Or medical records. Or a social security number that is valid.”

“It’s Tony, Steve.” That answered all the questions he supposes.

On his last day in the ICU, Steve is allowed to be pushed in a wheelchair one room down the hall to see Natasha.

She required a skin graft, to help the horribly burned flesh on her legs to heal fully. Steve’s shield had completely protected her head (as well as Agent Reno’s) and Steve’s body had taken the brunt of the burns to her body when he covered it. This doesn’t stop Steve’s guilt for the burns she did receive.

“Hey, Nat,” Steve murmurs as Sam wheels the chair to a spot beside the head of her bed. She is propped up, her bed angled so that she is sitting. Her hands are both wrapped for the burns adorning them but she is still holding a tablet and scrolling through some Shield database.

“Steve,” she greets him, a rare smile gracing her features. “They said you were out for a while.”

“Yeah, had some hardcore recovery to do.” Her eyes flick down, taking in the bandages still covering most of his body beneath the hospital gown.

“You goddamn idiot,” Natasha sighs. There is a note of exhaustion in her voice but also fondness. She is so done with his antics, but knows there is little she can do. Bucky clears his throat on the other side of the room, a silent agreement with everything her tone conveys.

They are only allowed a short visit as the nurse interrupts to let Steve know that they still need to redress his burns and check his vitals one more time before he leaves. As Sam grabs the handles of Steve’s wheelchair to push it back out the door, Natasha grips his forearm, surprisingly strong for the fact that there are burns on her own limb.

“Steve, promise me you will just… go home. Just rest and be okay and… yeah?” Her eyes flick to Bucky hovering in the corner as she says this, and Steve knows she is not referring to a place right now.

“Yeah, I will, Nat. I will,” Steve replies, a small smile bending the curve of his lips.

Natasha relaxes and Clint moves to take Steve’s spot beside the bed as Sam pulls his chair backwards to make room to pivot and leave. Bucky follows with Lady, her leash gripped tightly in his hand, knuckles white.

The two of them wait down the hall, away from the nurses (the rest of the floor is empty, Tony having privacy rights to the wing he paid to build, and had told them to keep the public away from Steve and Natasha’s recovery) as Steve is rebandaged and dons civilian clothes for the first time in days.

In Shield issued sweatpants and a soft sweater Tony had brought from his apartment at the tower, he is finally allowed to leave the hospital.

“Clint is going to fly you two back,” Tony informs them as he magically appears from behind the nurses station. Steve briefly wonders what kind of hacking bug he has just placed on their computer to wipe Captain America’s presence from the system.

On queue, Clint steps out of Natasha’s room, waving a small goodbye to his friend in the hospital bed. “Onwards?” he asks, taking the handles of Steve’s wheelchair from Sam to begin pushing them down the hall to the elevator.

“Don’t forget his goodies,” Tony says, tossing a baggie filled with white pills to Clint. He easily catches them with one hand and reaches over Steve’s shoulder to drop them in his lap. “Gonna be on pain pills for a few more days, Capsicle. Every four hours.”

Steve lifts his hand to give Tony a thumbs up over his shoulder as Clint wheels him too fast towards the elevator like a little kid allowed to push the shopping cart. Bucky tags along behind with Lady at his side.

“No wheelies,” Steve requests as Clint makes a few engine noises, like he is revving a car accelerator.

They leave the wheelchair near the door to the helicopter pad on the roof of the hospital. Steve can walk, and was cleared to by the doctor, but the bandages wrapping his body make it difficult. With Clint and Bucky both hovering like he is a senior citizen without his walker, he climbs into his seat in the back of the helicopter and begins to buckle. Bucky climbs in after him, lifting Lady easily in his arms. Steve is surprised that she is not scared of the strange vehicle, considering the last time she flew to arrive in New York was probably the first time she had ever been on any kind of plane. But she is perfectly calm, even nosing at Bucky’s hand when it shakes as he secures his own harness over his torso. When he is done with his own, Lady is strapped into the last seat, a harness perfectly fitting for a canine securing her body in place.

“Amazon prime?” Steve asks. He can just make out Bucky’s smile from this angle as he finishes tightening the straps around Lady’s chest.

Clint slides into the front of the helicopter and begins flipping switches, warming up the engine and starting the rotation of the blades. The thrum of them reverberates through Steve’s chest and he takes a deep breath, settling in for the flight. On the sliver of seat between them, Bucky reaches for his hand.

The next thing Steve knows, he is jolted awake by turbulence. Outside the window, it is darker, the sun setting, and the Black Hills are spread below.

“Gets windy in the mountains,” Clint says from the front, voice heard through the headset he wears with a small microphone by his mouth. “Winter is settling in up here.”

Steve raises one hand to rub at his bleary eyes, feeling like a newborn kitten, and takes stock of the back seat. Lady is asleep sitting up, the harness that keeps her safe not allowing her to lie down. He supposes it is a necessary sacrifice to keep her from being thrown about in the cabin but he feels bad for the collie mix. Between himself and the dog, Bucky is fast asleep, lips slightly parted as he breathes through a whisper of air between his teeth. His head is gently resting on Steve’s shoulder, like it had fallen there as they flew west. Between them, Bucky and Steve’s fingers are still intertwined.

Looking back out the window, Steve’s belly is suddenly hit with a small dosage of flying nerves. Despite being over land, they have somehow wormed their way into his psyche. He uses his free hand to nervously card through his hair. Why now? He closes his eyes and takes comfort in the knowledge that they are almost home.

His breaths get louder and louder as the helicopter descends through the landscape, fifteen minutes seeming like a lifetime somehow. Steve breathes through his nose and the whistling air movement wakes Bucky when they are only five minutes out from the house. A thumb gently strokes the back of Steve’s hand, the pressure through the bandages a welcome comfort, and he feels his shoulders relax some.

When they land, Lady is immediately released to run around the property and she takes off to the back yard. Without needing to hold her leash, Bucky refuses to let Steve walk inside without help and he finds himself with Bucky supporting him under his arms as he hobbles through the front door.

Clint wanders in behind them, arms full of the duffel bags Bucky had hastily packed with clothes for himself and Steve upon heading to the New York hospital. He hovers in the doorway as Bucky deposits Steve on the sofa and the latter cranes his neck to see Clint as he begins talking.

“Okay, Steve, I was given explicit instructions to tell you not to do anything stupid—“

“By Nat?” Steve asks, but Clint just carries on.

“—and to not go galloping around for at least three more days or you will hurt the healing skin—“

“Doctor.”

“—and to take your fucking drugs.”

“Tony.”

“Three for three,” Clint tells him as he dumps the contents of his arms onto the kitchen counter. There is a clang as Steve’s shield hits the stone counter through the neoprene case he uses for travel. “Now I was also told to have you write up your mission report ASAP and send it to Hill but…that might be hard…”

The way he trails off makes Steve feel like he has been talking with Natasha, and not about the weather. “It’ll be done sometime tomorrow,” Steve says, voice clipped. Bucky pauses where he has moved into the kitchen to find food and glances at Steve, the concern so real in his eyes that it feels like Steve’s skin is burning all over again.

“Okay, sounds good, I’ll be off then,” Clint says, discomfort apparent as he realizes he has hit a nerve. “Meds on the counter, remember Lady is outside g’night.”

The door rattles the windowpane in the kitchen as it closes behind Clint. Five seconds of silence pass in the house, just the sound of the helicopter blades whumping into action again barely discernible through the walls, and Steve thinks this might be all too much for him.

Bucky moves to the thermostat and turns on the heat. Steve belatedly notices that he must have turned it off before leaving because the cottage is chilly to Steve in his sweater and must be freezing to Bucky, who is wearing just a cotton long sleeve shirt. He is always cold, and Steve hopes he wasn’t too cold on the helicopter ride.

“Can you check the security cameras for Lady?” Bucky asks as he goes back to the fridge. “And what do you want to eat?”

“Something that doesn’t resemble hospital food,” Steve requests, thinking about the bland, pale food he had been forced to eat for the last few days. “And I don’t want to think about applesauce for at least a month.” Steve thinks he might hear what could be a chuckle from Bucky and then the shuffling of him digging through the refrigerator shelves.

Lady is located just off the back porch easily and Steve heaves himself off of the sofa and to the porch door to call her inside. She bounds up the short set of steps and into the house, shaking a few stray leaves from her long fur. They return to the sitting area together.

There is rattling and shuffling from the kitchen followed by the beep of the microwave buttons. Steve cranes his neck as Lady curls up in her bed on the far side of the coffee table and watches as Bucky pulls plates from the cabinet and fills two glasses of water at the sink.

“Don’t you even think about getting up,” Bucky tells him, able to sense Steve’s distress from across the space at sitting still.

He waits, tensed, for Bucky to bring the food into the living room, sliding a plate of microwavable lasagna in front of Steve and handing him a fork before returning to the kitchen for his own food. Bucky then settles onto the cushion beside Steve, as close as they had sat in the helicopter despite the length of their comfortable couch, and they tuck in.

When they are done eating, Bucky navigates his way through their cable recordings to find _The Price is Right_ and hits play without saying a word. Steve thinks his favorite thing about television is how much it can catch the both of them up on the modern world, such as learning what a Ninja Blender is and that they cost much more than Steve assumed a blender should ever cost.

There is an awkward air between them however. Normally, they would be curled up by now with Bucky’s head on Steve’s shoulder or chest as he tucked his feet onto the couch under a blanket. Instead, they are sitting straight up, side-by-side.

Steve decides that pain is worth clearing the air. “Buck, c’mere,” he murmurs. Bucky gives him an unsure look but Steve lifts his arm and slips it behind Bucky’s shoulders to encourage him to come closer and Bucky shifts, curling smaller into Steve’s embrace until he is tucked beneath Steve’s arm. His metal arm curls across Steve’s stomach to hold on, like he thinks Steve is going somewhere, and Steve can feel the cold through his sweater. It feels nice on his skin, for once. He does not flinch away. On the television, Drew Carey is asking another contestant to “Come on down!”

Steve’s eyes snap open when he feels himself being lifted, a sudden strange sense overtaking his mind. Thrown back in time, he realizes that since the serum, he has not been carried by anyone, unless he was to count medical stretchers.

Bucky’s arm is cold where it supports his shoulders. His flesh arm is under the crook of Steve’s knees. There is a gentle jostling rhythm as Bucky walks them the short distance to the bedroom and carefully lays Steve on his side of the bed. Steve thinks he imagines it when something soft, something like lips, presses briefly against his cheek. By the time Bucky moves around and begins tucking himself into the other side, Steve is asleep again.

 

Three days later, when Steve is almost fully healed and Tony gives the go-ahead to discontinue the pain meds, Steve nearly gives Bucky a heart attack.

When they ask Tony, he consults his physicians for the team and they come to the conclusion that the drowsiness caused by the pain medication must have been suppressing Steve’s subconscious in his sleep. Now, it is out to play. Whereas before, Steve had suffered in mostly silent, still torture from his nightmares, he now _acts them out_. More accurately, Steve throws himself overtop of the nearest body while he is asleep. This happens to always be Bucky. The first time this occurs, it leads to a sleepless night and several new bruises. Steve wakes to find himself pinned to the floor by a metal hand on his neck, the fingers twitching like they itch to tighten.

Through his disorientation, Steve can still utter the correct name. “Buck, _Buck._ ” The fingers slowly loosen, humanity returning to the set of eyes Steve can barely make out in the dark room. The light outside, from the harvest moon, glints off of them as Bucky shakes his head, settling onto his haunches as he sits with his legs bracketing Steve’s body.

Steve gulps. “What just happened?” Bucky’s explanation leaves a hollow, gut emptying feeling in Steve. He didn’t think things could get much worse.

After the third time Steve dives across Bucky in his sleep and is almost strangled, Tony creates a sleep aid that should work on Steve, a subtle derivative of the pain medication. Tony has Jarvis randomly assign a low-level Stark employee to ship it, someone who would never even give a second glance to a brown box heading to South Dakota from Stark’s headquarters. It arrives in one day and Steve leaves the prescription bottle on the nightstand as a reminder. He does not fancy waking to Bucky’s hands on his throat again, or agitating Bucky any further.

As it is, Lady is needed more than ever since her arrival. Bucky and her are practically inseparable as she sticks close to his side to comfort him. He is jumping at every noise even slightly above a standard decibel, the bathroom door closing too hard behind Steve causing a full body flinch. Lady is overworked as she attempts to comfort him, doing her best.

Steve of course does his part too, but he can’t always know what is happening in another room. More than once he looks for Bucky only to find him curled in a corner with Lady lapping at his hands, his face, as she tries to anchor him to time and space. When this happens, Steve softly approaches to talk to Bucky. His soft words can walk Bucky from the 40’s to the twenty first century if given enough time and patience. Afterwards, a blanket, tea, and cartoons are usually needed too.

The thing is, it’s all very _hard_. Somehow, these precautions and efforts that Steve had so easily put into life with Bucky and the Avengers suddenly feel infinitely more taxing. Before, talking Bucky out of dissociating had seemed like an easy, everyday hurdle that must be undertaken, but it now feels like climbing a mountain. Maybe it is the worse sleep or the patchier way he attains it but whatever the cause, Steve is exhausted in ways he never thought imaginable. Every morning feels like waking up in the hospital with his last memory being of falling from a helicarrier and the knowledge that Bucky is out there hanging over him. But Bucky is here, Bucky is safer than he has been in seventy odd years, but Steve can’t eradicate the ache of weight from his bones, like the very marrow is weighed down by something heavier than emotional scars.

Steve supposes that when he had sacrificed himself, he had assumed it would be the last time. He had assumed these everyday struggles would end, his experience of them over entirely. He had not expected to be here again.

Steve hides it from Bucky, but his tears have been in abundance as of late. The emotionally driven, gut wrenched vomiting episodes are back too, which had not seen the light of day since Bucky’s first week in the tower. More than once Steve hurries to the bathroom after talking Bucky down from a dissociative episode and he hopes that Bucky assumes his bladder just needs to let go after sitting in the corner with him for so long.

Bucky however, has been struggling with his tear ducts as well. Several times over the last week Bucky has pulled away from cuddling against Steve to leave small wet marks on his shirt. It is always after small moments with just body heat and blankets and comfort and Steve thinks that perhaps it is just all too soft for Bucky to bear. After countless years of harsh words, harder punishment, and the cold, emotionless connections between himself and handlers, such care (as disjointed and perhaps toxic as Steve’s is) causes Bucky to feel a bit too much.

Whatever the case may be, neither is fooling the other. At the exact mark of two weeks since their return from the hospital, Natasha calls.

“Nat, I’m going stir crazy. Please tell me we have a lead. Also, when did you stop keeping me updated on the digging?”

“Even if we did, you’re not going anywhere,” Natasha tells Steve briskly from the other end of the line.

“Nat…?” Steve says, a question of warning.

“Steve, you need to rest.”

“And you don’t?”

“I am going into the field this time… And I’m not the one who tried to get myself barbecued.”

She has a point, but Steve doesn’t concede. Instead he changes the topic. “Have we got anything on Keres?”

“Just things from the grapevine, nothing concrete. We are still trying to determine if Hult was Hydra or Keres.”

“Did the clean up crew find anything at the location?”

“Almost everything burnt, definitely no documents survived. That was probably half the point.”

Steve sighs on his end, leaning back to knock his head into the headboard. He is sitting on the bed with his laptop open on his legs. The current tab is one on dissociation caused by anxiety. Bucky is outside with Lady, oblivious to Steve’s research.

“So what is the plan? What can I do from here?”

“For now, nothing. I am doing as much digging as I can while still mildly bedridden and Clint is investigating a site outside of Atlanta. We’ve got it, Steve. You need to focus on your own for now.”

There is something off in Natasha’s tone, a note of sad fondness. Steve gets the idea that she is talking about more than just Steve recovering and keeping track of Bucky.

“What is it, Nat?”

There is rustling on the other end, like Natasha is settling into a chair. Oh boy.

“Bucky has been emailing me—“

“When and how did he learn to use the Internet so easily?”

Natasha pauses like a mother silently scolding a child for interrupting.

“Bucky has been emailing me,” she begins again, “and he is very concerned at the moment. About both of you. And I may be finally, truly overstepping a boundary but first off, you two both need professional help. And two, you both need to talk about your feelings because it is painful to watch you two dance around the elephant in the room like this.”

“Dancing around what?” Steve asks, ignoring the first half of the sentence; he knows this, had a tab open for this five minutes ago. It is actually taking action that seems all too daunting. Dialing a number seems too scary. Their situation is so precarious as it is.  

“Steve, you aren’t seriously asking me this, are you?”

“ _Natasha, what are you talking about_.”

“Steve, you have feelings for one another, right?”

Oh. Holy shit. “…What?”

“You guys are over the moon for one another, don’t play with me.”

Steve is dumbfounded for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a lazy fish as he tries to think of what to say. He is glad Bucky is outside with Lady, curled up in his hammock, because him overhearing any of this conversation would be horrible. But suddenly Steve sees Natasha’s point, realizes that they have been sleeping in the same bed for months, even though they don’t need each other’s warmth to survive, like before the war. And they look to each other for so much comfort, for reassurance and safety and protection in one another’s arms. And there have been forehead kisses and hugs and handholding…

“Holy shit, we have feelings.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Holy shit, I am in love with my best friend.” Steve is embarrassed to be saying this to Natasha, but he can’t hold it in. The realization is a shock and suddenly he can see every way he has been fawning and falling for Bucky without knowing.

“So this wasn’t a thing like… before? Because Sam was betting that you two did the frick frack back in the war but I was betting that it’s something new.”

“You guys are _betting on us_?”

“Yeah because it’s so obvious that it’s hard to be in the same room as you two these days. Except for that cuddle night, that was really nice. But this is something new then?”

Steve thinks about this question now. Is it? He supposes, but looking back they were gone for each other long before this century… Everything had started and ended with Bucky. Everything had seemed to not start again until Bucky had been there again… How had he never realized?

“I think… I think just recognizing it is new.”

“So… we are both right?”

“Yeah? Because I can see it now, why I never dated before Peggy…. Never had feelings for a girl before her… Does this mean I’m gay?”

“I can’t tell you but if your feelings for Peggy were real then I’d guess that you’re bi, Steve.”

Steve has a tab open on his computer again and he’s suddenly google searching “bisexual”.

“Makes sense you didn’t realize though,” Natasha carries on. “I don’t think bisexuality was a recognized thing in that day, plus legality and all that. So you just assumed Peggy was the first girl you were really into and didn’t recognize that your feelings for Bucky weren’t platonic.”

“But like…what do I do?”

“Are you asking me to explain sex to you, Steve?”

“No, lord no,” Steve says hurriedly once he can organize his thoughts again. “But like even if I am in love with Bucky he’s not… can I pursue that?”

“Is this a “can” or “should” question?” Natasha asks.

“Should. He has been through so much and still doesn’t always cope okay…like if I say anything it is just one more thing on his plate….”

“Steve, there was a lot that Bucky has covered in the emails,” Natasha explains slowly. There is so much emphasis on these words that Steve becomes hyper focused. “And I, having read them, think that you should say something.”

“But, Nat, I don’t know if Bucky can—if he could ever be that close to someone anymore.”

“Physically, I agree that it will be hard for him, if ever. He’s been through worse and I know it’s near impossible for me. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love one another. That’s not a healthy basis for a relationship anyways,” she explains, and Steve suddenly feels like he is asking an older sister for advice, sat cross-legged on the floor of a twenty first century bedroom and asking the stupidest of teen questions.

“You can’t ever tell anyone how stupid I am,” Steve blurts. It is a childlike request but the first thing he thinks of is how much teasing Tony will dish if he were to know about this conversation.

“Steve, you are not stupid. You are a love struck, adorable dork who needs some friendly advice.”

“Thank you, Nat,” Steve murmurs. He is surprised when she knows what he said.

“Of course,” she responds. “I’ll call again when we dig up more.”

“Talk to you soon.”

Natasha is the one who hangs up. Steve continues to sit on the bed with his laptop open to a tab with a Wikipedia definition of bisexuality and listen to the drone of the disconnected phone call.

 _‘Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females’_ Steve reads. Seeing words that seem applicable is like his first breath after being underwater for the last half hour.

It takes twenty minutes before Steve realizes that he needs to get off of his computer and start dinner. The dark hole of Internet searching and clicking had begun to take over, and he shuts his laptop with a snap to keep himself from falling further in.

Bucky comes back inside at almost the same time that Steve is starting dinner. His timing is impeccable, and Steve needs the help seeing as his cooking skills can be somewhat lacking, but suddenly everything feels too overwhelming. How does he function with the knowledge that he knows he loves this man with every ounce of his being? How does he act _normal_ now?

If Bucky catches onto the fact that Steve is internally panicking, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he carefully cuts up some fruit and then pulls the plates from the cabinet, metal hand clinking against the ceramic.

As per their usual schedule, they watch TV while they eat. Steve recognizes that is an unhealthy, twenty first century habit that they have developed but loves it too much to stop now. They recently began watching _The League_ and Steve is fascinated by the normality of the character’s life. Although, he doesn’t think it would seem totally normal to all people. They do, after all, play fantasy football but it’s a hobby that Steve can barely grasp the existence of, let alone imagine participating in himself.

Steve isn’t focused on the episode however. He can’t stop thinking about his conversation with Natasha. He is sitting on couch cushion apart from someone who he has loved for decades _and he has never done anything about it_.

If he wants to be horribly dark, he could say he _did_ do something about it when he crashed the Valkyrie, but he has never recognized how deeply in love he is, has never considered actually _being_ with Bucky, has never considered how much more there could be to their lives together.

The opportunities make him feel like he can’t breath. There is so much they have missed out on and Steve is berating himself, wondering how he ever let this all happen, how he ever managed to fuck all this up so spectacularly. Steve is too deep in thought to hear Bucky sliding his plate onto the coffee table and shifting off the couch. He does notice Bucky crouching in front of him though, moving one hand to balance himself by gripping Steve’s knee as he puts himself within Steve’s view.

“Steve? Are you okay?” Bucky asks. Despite his confidence in the severity of the situation to move to Steve, he still is flicking his eyes about, seemingly unable to meet Steve’s as he tries to help whatever situation is brewing in his friend’s head.

But they aren’t _just_ friends, and that’s what Steve is trying to voice, although his thoughts don’t seem to be coherently arriving on his tongue. “Bucky—I—“ And what is there to say? How do you tell someone that you have loved them for seventy years? How do you come out to someone _and_ tell them that they are _everything_ in one concise sentence? How does one’s lips find those words?

“Steve?” And now Bucky sounds scared and that makes Steve feel more panicked because he doesn’t want Bucky to feel apprehensive about this. Of all the occurrences to cause Bucky distress, Steve would never want it to be this.

He slips his hand over Bucky’s on his knee and draws every ounce of courage he has. How can Steve walk into battle against alien invasions and world dominating robots but not have this conversation? “Bucky… I’m in love with you. And I think you know this but it just…it needs to be said. And like…recognized?” Steve pauses as his gut twists uncomfortably, nerves tangling his intestines. “And I would understand one hundred percent if you can’t be… involved in anything right now. Hell, neither of us probably should be if we are going to be honest, but I need you to know—“

Steve cuts himself off as Bucky finally moves, eyes flicking to meet his for a brief moment and then rising off his haunches to make himself eye level with Steve. He glances between Steve’s eyes for a moment and it takes Steve several seconds to realize that he is slowly leaning forwards. Moments before their lips touch, Steve breathes a sigh of relief.

Bucky’s lips are softer than Steve imagined, the years of torture and imprisonment hardening everything but them. His lips mold to Steve’s and they are only slightly colder than his own.

Bucky pulls back suddenly, but only a few inches. His hands are on either side of Steve’s face, one cold and one flesh temperature; the exact way he grounded Steve from nightmares when they were still manageable. Their eyes are locked and Steve stares into the ocean-like gray blue of Bucky’s.

“God, Buck,” he sighs, leaning forwards to press their foreheads together. It is a bit hard and they knock skulls but neither seems to care. “Oh, Bucky.” Steve finds himself pressing his lips to Bucky’s nose, an impulse that causes Bucky to squeeze his eyes shut tight.

“Buck,” Steve whispers as he moves to kiss his mouth again. His hands move, frozen in place until now, to pull Bucky onto the couch beside him. Off of the floor and onto the cushions, they are now level. Steve’s arms wrap around Bucky, pulling him close. The kisses are not consistent, gentle brushes of lips that lead to vigorous melding and then soft touches again. Bucky breaks the kiss often, checking Steve’s eyes for hesitation, as though this is unexpected. Perhaps it is too good to be true for him.

Steve finds himself nuzzling into Bucky’s neck as his hair is pet with cold metal. He presses his lips once, then twice to the line of muscle up the side of Bucky’s neck.

“You’re shaking,” Bucky notes and Steve realizes it is the first time that he has spoken since Steve’s confession. Bucky’s observation is correct; Steve _is_ quivering. His muscles are shaking with some great emotion. Perhaps it is the relief of finally being here, in this state with Bucky and having everything in the open. He thinks he has known that this was meant to be for centuries, but never allowed himself to consciously recognize it.

Bucky cradles Steve’s head to his shoulder, the thumping of his heart audible to Steve’s ear past all the muscle. Bucky’s chest suddenly jumps and Steve glances to check Bucky’s face. It is hard to see from his slouched position but when he readjusts, he can see a trail of tears making their way down Bucky’s cheeks.

Steve hurriedly sits up, bumping Bucky’s arm in the process that had been loosely wrapped around Steve as it slowly moves to allow him space. “Bucky, what’s wrong?” he asks too quickly.

“Steve, I’m just…” Bucky says, voice hitching at the end of the sentence. And Steve searches his face, looking for clues as to what is happening in Bucky’s addled mind. Steve is worried that he has crossed a line, broken a wall, or triggered a memory, maybe a conditioning. But Bucky is gazing back as steadily as he can, eyes on Steve’s as he hurriedly flits his about.

“What is it, Bucky?” Steve finally asks again, the prompt he had been withholding.

Bucky’s hand finds the back of Steve’s neck and plays with the hairs at the bottom of his hairline, stroking them smooth and mussing them up again. “I’m just happy, Steve.”

Things are not necessarily easier after that, but life becomes incrementally simpler without unrequited love hanging over both of their heads. The irony is that they act much the same as they did _before_ admitting their feelings to one another and recognizing the love that had lingered across their entire lives. But they had already acted as though they were emotionally, irrevocably invested in one another for so long—because they were—that it feels ironic how they are acting now.

In the mornings, Steve sometimes finds himself hugging Bucky from behind as he makes coffee or washes dishes just as he had the day before the mission to find Hult. Life seems so ordinary, and yet theirs is the most extraordinary of all in most ways.

Steve revels in the fact that he can finally kiss Bucky, can press his lips to Bucky’s own or his skin daily. He takes advantage of this fact, turning his head as they cuddle or swooping in to silently beg kisses from Bucky whenever he thinks of it. Bucky has no qualms about this, administering them as needed. Both of them are so suited to such a domestic lifestyle together that it is astounding they had not simply slipped into these routines before.

It is this semblance of simple, human life that is broken but a week after the phone call with Natasha. It is Clint that calls this time to interrupt life.

“Nat is going under,” is the first words out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, _what_ ?” Steve asks. He is seated on the couch, phone to his ear as Bucky lies across the remaining cushions. His head is in Steve’s lap and he had thought Bucky was asleep until Clint’s call. His eyes had popped open so quickly however that Steve now knows that he was not. On the TV, _Treasure Planet_ plays, oblivious to the distress suddenly plaguing Steve.

“Keres is not something you can just _find_ information on. We have proven this time and time again. So Natasha is going undercover to find an in,” Clint explains. His voice sounds moderately more unhappy than Steve feels about this prospect.

“She can’t though, she can’t risk—“

“You don’t think I haven’t tried telling her that?” Clint cuts Steve off. “She is determined, she knows that she is the one for the job.”

“But this… this is something huge she is getting involved in,” Steve tries.

“Steve… Neither of us like this but we know it's the only way.”

Bucky’s eyes are piercing into Steve, wondering what on earth has happened in New York to warrant such a reaction from Steve at the call. Steve gazes down at Bucky, at the man that he would do anything for. The man he has tried multiple times to _die for_. This is how he keeps Bucky safe, this is how he makes sure that an organization more villainous than Hydra does not come near him ever again.

His free hand gently strokes back Bucky’s hair, the dark curtains soft to the touch. Steve’s thumb lightly brushes over Bucky’s cheekbone and his eyes flutter closed momentarily at the sensation.

It feels like a sacrifice, or perhaps picking favorites. Steve hates himself as much as he loves Bucky as he admits defeat to arguing with Clint: “What is she going to do?”

The plan is simple. Steve is going to be on the comm unit, helping run the mission from this end. Natasha is still refusing to allow him on the mission and somehow has the entire team behind her. Steve admittedly did secretly try to request Tony to send a helicopter but she has pinched them all under her thumb on the matter and Steve was refused. So he is running the mission from the cottage, separate from the action. Bucky, too anxious to stay in the same room as Steve, his comm unit, and his tablet that is synced with Maria Hill’s, stays in the living room with Lady and watches his favorite cartoons. He occasionally peeks in on Steve who offers him small, reassuring smiles.

Near the Black Sea outside of Burgas, Bulgaria, Wanda, Sam, Natasha, and Clint are staging her infiltration. Under the cover of their diversion, Natasha is swapping herself into the system, Stark technology hacking her fingerprints and eye scans into the system to overwrite the ones of whichever female Hydra she can find first. The hard part is finding someone of a high enough rank, someone who has a right to ask about Keres and perhaps ascend within the organization fast enough to join them. This is the challenge.

Steve’s part is to recoordinate as needed, his tactical skills and his leadership of the team an asset that they still cannot give up, especially on such a high stakes mission.

Bucky has just peaked through the doorway and checked on Steve when Natasha’s comm unit is ditched.

“She’s gone?” Steve asks.

“She’s in,” Clint affirms, a note of unease and calm resolve in his voice. “That’s it.”

“Okay guys, keep up the act and retreat. Slowly, remember you’re being beaten back. Everything is going wrong and you need to get out. Make it a struggle,” Steve instructs them. Through the comm, he hears Wanda grunt in effort of manipulating something, red energy tendrils sweeping through the air.

“I’ve got three blocking my retreat,” Sam shouts. “I need back up over here.”

“Gotcha,” Clint confirms. Steve waits just moments before Sam calls a ‘thank you’ through the comms and they move on.

It takes twenty minutes for them to fully retreat from the base and get aboard the helicopter on which they arrived. Sam has to fly on his wings to catch it as Clint pulls it from the ground, enhancing the act of their hurried retreat in the face of overwhelming odds.

“And now we wait,” Clint says.

“And now we wait,” Steve affirms. They wait for Natasha to make contact.

“She knows what she is doing boys,” Hill tells them. “It won’t be too long.” In undercover agent time, this could mean months, even years.

And suddenly, there is nothing for Steve and Bucky to focus on but themselves. It is daunting to say the least.

Thankfully, with Steve taking Tony-made pills before bed, the nightmares that caused so much stress are gone but this is not a permanent solution. After only a few days of late mornings and constant cuddles, they bite the bullet and talk.

It starts when Bucky has a realization. They are outside, on the porch and watching the birds arrive at the pond to nest for the night. The sun is setting early these days, falling behind the pine forest hills by dinnertime. Lady is lying at Bucky’s feet, her bed from the living room brought out so she does not have to lay on the hardwood. His socked toes are tucked under her torso, keeping warm. “Steve,” Bucky starts, “How are you doing?”

Steve thinks about it. His nightmares still exist but are under control. Without the Avengers work, he does feel lost but he has Bucky. Is he stressed? Always. Does he feel like he is teetering above a pit of despair? Always. Ever since the war that he somehow still seems to be fighting.

So Steve is honest. “I feel the same.”

“Is…is that a good or bad thing?”

“It’s a neutral thing,” Steve replies lazily. Their seats are only a few feet apart and Steve reaches over to put a reassuring hand on Bucky’s thigh. Bucky puts his hand over Steve’s and sighs heavily.

“It doesn’t sound like it.” It is the most sure thing Steve thinks he has heard Bucky say in a while. They sit in silence for a few moments, watching as a small group of flycatchers swoop into a tree on the far side of the pond to nestle amongst its branches. “It’s just that you haven’t been okay for a while, so the same… the same isn’t good, Stevie.”

“Well it’s the truth,” Steve says defensively. Mostly, he just hates people telling him that he isn’t okay.

“Steve, I think—“ and Bucky cuts himself off then, unsure if he should finish his sentence.

Steve gazes out at the yard, at the pond with the late autumn sun shimmering off the surface. At the birds tucking themselves into the trees and the few ducks still paddling on the surface. Everything is so calm. He can do this. Steve takes a deep breath.

“Bucky, what were you going to say?”

“I think you need to talk to someone.”

And Steve can’t help the dry, sassy reply that falls from his lips. “I am talking to someone, Bucky.”

“You know what I mean, Steve.” Bucky’s voice has no venom, just chiding his best friend.

Steve sighs. Bucky’s hand atop Steve’s on his thigh threads their fingers and gently runs his thumb comfortingly along the side.

“It’s just…something needs to change,” Bucky says quietly. Lady shifts at his feet, tucking her nose further beneath a front paw. “Something needs to change for both of us.”

And, well, Steve knows Bucky is right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First things first, I would like to say that I plan on having a smaller sequel that wraps up some of the loose ends left here (so if you need to know about Natasha, no worries!) I will not be embarking on this immediately as I am currently writing [ Domestic December ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8683330?view_full_work=true) and going into my university's finals, but it will be appearing sometime early in 2017 if all goes to plan!
> 
> As always please let me know your thoughts with comments and kudos! If you would like to see more information about WaHKF, [here](http://smithsonianstucky.tumblr.com/whenaheartknowsfear)is the reference page I have on my tumblr for the fic and you can also feel free to talk to me there!

**Author's Note:**

> I did not realize until months after writing and posting this chapter how sick it is to have Steve read _1989_ because of how Bucky was brainwashed is so similar to the treatment of the protagonist in Orwell's book... Unsure if that detail will change or not if/when I do an overhaul of this story because I feel like that would seriously fuck Steve up


End file.
